The truth in love : from the sermons of William R. Richards

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IN LOVE

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The Truth In Love

FROM THE SERMONS OF

WILLIAM R. RICHARDS, D.D.

ARRANGED FOR DAILY READINGS
BY

A. VAN DOREN HONEYMAN

'Loving men is the Scriptural rule for knozving God.

IplainfielO, IRew Jcvec^
1bonesman'0 publisbina Ibouse

1912

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Copyright, 1912, by

HONEYMAN'S PUBLISHING HOUSE

TimtUiam IRoaers 1Ricbart)5

1853-1910

Central Church, Bath, Maine, 1879-1884

Crescent Avenue Church, Plainfield, N. J., 1884-1902

Brick Church, New York City, 1902-1910

Ilntro&uctor^

A GREAT, pure soul passed from earth when Dr.
WilHam R. Richards, on January 7th, 1910, an-
swered the sudden call to go hence and company
with his Divine Master.

Unique in his influence as a successful Chris-
tian minister ; singularly beloved by his people in
three parishes ; admired as a citizen because of
his lofty moral sentiments, often expressed, on
civic questions, he was translated to his Eternal
Home when intellect and strength were in the
plentitude of their powers, and his responsibilities
at the mark of high noon.

From his earliest ministry his mind was ripe
with spiritual truths ; and, while there appeared
added richness and mellowness in his preaching
in his later days, he varied little during his active
and beautiful life in his manner of speech in the
pulpit, and none in the wholesome, uplifting,
thoroughly righteous doctrines he felt it his mis-
sion to inculcate. The one foundation of all his
5

messages from the sacred desk was Jesus Christ
— His life, His words, His atoning work. Hu-
manitarian doctrines had place in his sermons
only as they were illuminated by the clear sun-
light of God's unfathomable love and purpose;
and such he preached with heartfelt energy. He
was as catholic as the air we breathe in all the
non-essentials of denominational creeds, which to
him were guide-posts of the ages, but not the
Bible. The Divine law, man's duty to man, and
the certainty of the Life Everlasting, were the trio
of propositions in which he delighted — the pat-
tern, the obligation and the hope for Christian
service and victorious manhood and woman-
hood. !

In being privileged to examine carefully some
hundreds of his sermons delivered at his three
parishes, in Maine, New Jersey and New York
City — many of them repeated by request, some
before colleges and schools — one finds in them
all the same golden threads of unselfish helpful-
ness toward those struggling in temptation; the
same unalterable Christly ideals; the same prac-
tical hope for everybody who would "elect" to
be upright, pure, unselfish and prayerful ; the
same constant warnings that the consequences of
sin in this world are inexorable, coupled with the
6

Gospel proclamation that repentance and a new
life could save men "to the uttermost."

One cannot study these sermons without ob-
serving that two of the important truths which
constituted the bases of his preaching were, that
wonderful conception of the Apostle John, that
"God is love," and the correlated aphorism (his
own), that "loving men is the Scriptural rule for
knowing God." It is because he always spoke
"the truth in love," as Paul urged it should be
spoken, that the title for these extracts has been
chosen.

So marked was this personal, sacred posses-
sion by him, of love for the Divine and love for
the human, that it irradiated his face at times
with a strange and heavenly illumination —

"The light that never was on sea or land."

His countenance then, sympathetic, affectionate,
exultant with hope, saintly, we who knew and
loved him remember so well — an unconscious
tribute to his own highborn character, and a
Christlike benediction to others of peace and
good will.

His language was simple and direct, and fre-
quently argumentative. He reasoned things out ;
reasoned closely; and, when he made his point,
7

it was so fortified as to be impregnable. For this
reason it has been difficult to detach short sen-
tences from his sermons, and thus wrest them
from what precedes or succeeds. Every thought
so overlaps another that usually only long quo-
tations would give just the idea he is seeking to
convey. While his style was simplicity itself,
his mental processes as spoken were an inter-
woven warp and woof. In other words, each
sermon was a complete whole, and any one part
of it now detached fails to exhibit the beautiful
symmetry of that whole. Nevertheless, many of
his gracious sayings have been treasured up by
welcoming minds, and it is hoped that a few of
them may be found among those contained in
this volume.

It is needless to say that this fragmentary
work is not published so much for any expected
general circulation, as for those of his dear and
valued former parishioners and friends to whom
it may serve to renew a spiritual acquaintance
with Dr. Richards. Such, it is believed, will feel
a peculiar gratification in using its pages for
daily readings ; and if to any the result shall
be to continue the influence of this rare teacher
in the building up of human character upon the
grounds of faith pointed out by him with so
8

much candor and felicity, the preparation of
this volume, which has been wholly one of love,
will not have been in vain.

The likeness of Dr. Richards, which serves as
a frontispiece to the book, is from a photograph
by Alman, of New York, taken early in 1903.

Acknowledgment must be made here of the
warmest appreciation by the compiler of the
personal cooperation of Mrs. William R. Rich-
ards, now of Bridgeport, Conn., without whose
sympathy and direct aid this book could not have
been prepared ; also of the important assistance
of Miss Carrie C. Dewey, of Plainfield, a co-la-
borer in the same service ; also of the courtesy of
Charles Scribner's Sons, Fleming H. Revell Co.,
and the Presbyterian Board of Publication, in
permitting quotations to be taken from copy-
righted works published by them, which works,
among others, are noted on another page.

A. V. D. H.
Plainfield, N. J., Nov. 4, 1912.

'EJe ^tut^ in JLo\)t

The question is raised sometimes, whether
that ancient institution of the Christian min-
istry is not Hearing its limits; whether this is
not rather the age of the library and the news-
paper; whether the age of the preacher has
not gone by. More than once it has begun to
seem so. But just as the world was about to
settle down to such a conclusion, again and
again God sent with it some living man, who
could speak so that the sheep knew His voice.
. . . What is the secret of the extraordinary
influence of such men? I do not know. One
can only say that God has given some men a
mysterious power of personality, and also the
ability to express it; and whenever that per-
sonality has been taken possession of by the
Christ who gave His life for men, there the
sheep hear the voice and delight to hear and
follow.

12

Zbc XErutb in %ovc

Hanuarg tit^t—Bt^ ^tat'^

Like a company of travelers, we are
wandering homeless on, whither we do
not know. This day slips by quickly
while we talk about it ; and then comes
the dark, and then perhaps another day;
but we enter it as strangers in a strange
land. Yet it is our privilege, if we will
trust the promise of Jesus, to move on
into this strange new country as cheerful
and fearless as some little child at home,
who sees above him the roof and all
about him the safe walls of his father's
house.

3lantiat^ ^ttonti

Providence appoints for us bright
days with the Beatitudes as well as dark
nights in Gethsemane ; and while the day
lasts let us rejoice in the light of it,
13

We cannot silence these curious
hearts of ours. No matter how we try
to busy them with other things, they will
turn back to the old questions about the
unseen, the soul, the future life, God.
The soul, the real man, underneath this
changing garment of mortality : what is
the real man back of it all, who inhabits
it, and uses it, and rules it, and draws in
his knowledge through its channels of
sense, and works out his will through its
intricate mechanism of nerve and muscle ;
who loves and hates, sins and repents?

31anuatp tontt^

This narrow gate, which one must
choose to enter by himself alone; this
narrow way of determined, undeviating
faith in God, and loving obedience to
Him ; oh ! it leads into a very spacious
country, . . where there is room to
draw all your loved ones, and even to
number among them those who were
once counted enemies. There is breadth
for you. It leads into eternal life — that
path does; it leads into the very fulness
of God.

14

ganuatg ttftfi

Other things change, come and go,
grow and die: customs, fashions, lan-
guages, nations of men, books, schools,
political parties, clubs and societies of
reform. These are creatures of a day.
But one society, the Church, in its essen-
tial characteristics and vital principles,
changes not, except to grow on and
thrust out ever new shoots. . . Mor-
tally wounded, levelled to the earth
times without number, it only sinks its
roots the deeper and throws out its shoots
over a wider region; and it will yet Hft
its head the higher and thrust forth fair
branches every way, until the old
prophesy is fulfilled, and the nations of
the earth come and rest under its
gracious shelter.

3lanuarp ^ittfl

The one hopeless tragedy of growing
up and growing old is to lose your ideals.
Escape that peril and there will be no
tragedy in growing old.
15

Our Lord Jesns Christ came into the
world that we might have Hfe, and that
we might have it more abundantly. We
believe in this more abundant life that
He has promised us, this life everlasting.
And I am well assured that all the rich
and novel experiences of the unknown
future shall never rob me of this personal
identity to which I cling so fondly now.
I myself, blessed be God, am going to live
on. . . Life — that is a good word
to stand at the end of a Christian's creed.

3lanuatp n'fffitg

One strong reason for following Him
with loyal fidelity — for inducing our
neighbors to follow Him with loyal fidel-
ity— is that we and they may be delivered
from the fear of death, which holds men
all their lifetime subject to bondage, . .
Let men see, as they look at you, that the
one strong reason for trusting ourselves
and our dear ones to Jesus Christ is be-
cause He and He only has the words of
eternal life.

i6

A life of faith and of loving service,
whether on earth or in heaven — that is
the soul's home. Do not waste your life
out in the wilderness. It is a doleful
place there. The world and its fashions
are ageing every day, withering, chang-
ing, darkening. The light of a better day
is shining, brighter and brighter; more
and more of those angel faces will smile
upon you.

" Old friends, old scenes will lovelier be
As more of heaven in each we see. ' '

Come home, come home! Life will still
be a sort of pilgrimage, perhaps, but
every step of it will be taking us into
brighter, sweeter, more homelike regions,
until at last "the day break and the shad-
ows flee away."

3anuar? tentS

In the presence of death our Chris-
tian faith ought to be speaking, always,
in a tone of triumph.
17

3lanuatg debtntj

The Divine Master has gone beyond
our sight, but He is not dead. He is
aHve, and because He hves, we shall Hve
also, and we shall see Him. . . Some-
time, somewhere, some day, the Master
shall call His servants before Him, and
take account of them, and we want to
keep that day in mind when we are de-
ciding now what sort of life will be best
worth living.

3lanuatg tioeUtS

The water of the river down in the
valley is fit to drink, if you are thirsty
enough, but it has not the delicious cool-
ness and freshness of that spring upon
the mountain, a mile or two nearer
heaven. If you want to enjoy that you
must take the pains to climb up there for
it. There are some religious truths that
are a sort of common possession for the
multitudes of people who live at their
ease down in the valley. But down on
that lower level these truths have never
quite the same flavor as up on the height,
where some one first climbed to discover
them,.

i8

There is a home of the soul which
change and decay cannot touch — whose
walls never fall into dilapidation, but,
rather, are built higher and stronger
every day with courses of imperishable
masonry.

3|anuatg tourtontj

How pathetic it is to watch the efforts
of men when they have tried to turn
back or check the current of this river
of Time ! We appoint our commemora-
tive anniversaries, links holding us to the
past. We band ourselves together in an-
cestral societies. We build monuments
to the heroes that have been. We make
pilgrimages to the old houses and old
shrines. . . But in a moment we
draw back shuddering; for the great
monument, when we touch it, proves to
be nothing but a grave ; the chill of death
is there. There is nothing like a ''home"
for any living man.

19

3lanuarp tittetnt^

"Be of good cheer," Christ used to
say to His disciples. Be cheerful; that
is our modern English for it. Carry that
sort of look on your face as of a person
who has heard a piece of rare good
news; carry that sort of tone in your
voice. If the circumstances of your hfe
are depressing; if you have known what
it was to suffer pain, or to lose your
goods, or even to lose your friends, and
in spite of that can be of good cheer, it
will mean all the more; a candle shining
all the brighter when it is shining in the
dark.

"God so loved the world that He gave
His only begotten Son." In that unfath-
omable but radiant mystery of the sacri-
fice of the Son of God, you have the fifth
commandment as it is fulfilled in Jesus
Christ.

20

Some day, please God, if we keep
on patiently going, these scales shall drop
from our eyes; these deaf ears shall be
unstopped ; this heavy veil shall be drawn
aside ; we shall see Him face to face.

3Ianuat? ^iffStontS

In so many ways God has been seek-
ing us — by the joys He sends us; by the
sorrow and disappointments that He al-
lows to fall upon us ; by the human loves
He gives and then for awhile takes away ;
by all the force of holy example and
teaching; by the whispers of conscience;
by the hunger and thirst He has put in
our souls; by the life of His dear Son,
and by Plis death, and all the gracious
influence of His spirit. In ten thousand
ways He has been seeking us.

21

3Ianuatg ninttttnti

Every worthy church of Jesus Christ
ought to be a working church. Its
worthy members ought to be asking for
abihty to show themselves working mem-
bers; busy members. . . My idea of
a church is a great business corporation,
an industrial co-operative concern; men
and women associated together for the
sake of accompHshing more work than
they could accomplish separately in a
world where unlimited amounts of work
are waiting to be done.

Why should anyone be ashamed of
Jesus Christ ? It seems a most irrational
and incomprehensible emotion. . . One
can easily understand that a man might
be ashamed not to be a Christian ; but
how could he be ashamed to be a Chris-
tian?

22

3[anuatp ttoent^-tirisit

It is part of the deepest element of
all religious experience that we should
feel ourselves to be standing in the pres-
ence of One who knows us altogether,
and willingly to lay our hearts bare be-
fore Him, and pray that He would see it
all as it is, and take the evil away, and
make us right and true as He is true.

31anuat^ ttoentp-^econti

As human society grows more Chris-
tian, the conscience of men will be busied
more and more looking after their sins
of omission. Positive crimes, like mur-
der, can be left largely to the rude law
of the state. But this higher tribunal,
this court — the conscience of man, which
under God is the Supreme Court of the
nations — will give its time to convicting
men of their intolerable guilt toward one
another because of the things that they
have not done.

23

Any damaging statement against a
neighbor's character is a most deadly
weapon. It is your business to know
whether it is true or false before you
touch it. Indeed, true or false, you have
no right to amuse yourself with a thing
so deadly. Unless there is some good
and sufficient reason, you must not bear
even true witness against your neighbor.
The rule is : Keep still, as long as you
possibly can.

A properly enlightened conscience in-
sists that a man should prove himself
worth his salt; and, if he consumes a
specially large proportion of salt, it be-
comes him to exhibit a correspondingly
large proportion of worthiness. If he
cost the community more than the aver-
age, he ought to be rendering a corre-
spondingly greater service to the com-
munity.

24

When Jesus Christ calls His friends
together to remember Him, of course it
would be shameful for any man who was
not a true friend to push himself in
among them fraudulently, and profess
that he was a friend of Christ. But
might it not be as sad an offense against
truth and as painful to the Master when
the friends of Christ are called together
to acknowledge Him, if some one, who
really was His friend, should hold his
peace and turn away as if he loved Him
not?

3lanuatp ttoentp-gfi^EtS

So far as I do honestly love my
neighbor it becomes impossible for me to
covet the things that are his. Either the
loving will drive out the coveting, or else
the coveting will keep out the loving.
25

We want to keep on touching Jesus
Christ, in all our times of need and
trouble; yes, we want to have His touch
upon us in all our times of action and
hopeful endeavor. And I suppose the
one best service one can render any
friend or neighbor whom we wish to
help is to bring him to the place where
he also, in the spirit and the motive of
his life, shall touch Jesus. Whitherso-
ever He went, in villages, or cities, or
country, *'as many as touched Him were
made whole."

It is inevitable that the man will be-
come like Jesus if he passes enough time
with Him.

26

In all our journeys through the
world, whether toward Jericho or any
other city, we are to keep our eyes open
for every opportunity to be saving men's
lives; for, if ever we neglect one such
opportunity, we may soon hear the Judge
saying in condemnation, "Inasmuch as
ye did it not."

We cannot say who, out of all who
come under our influence, may yield to
influences for good; therefore try and
hope for all. So often as you are brought
into personal relations with anyone, act
as if he were the one whom you are to
help toward Jesus Christ. "Thou know-
est not whether shall prosper this or
that." Therefore let no chance go by.
27

3|anuar^-tfiirt^-ttt!Sit

''Whosoever wills to save his soul
shall lose it." You must find something
better than that to work for if you would
taste the sweetness of Christ's salvation.
You must look away from yourself.
You must look at Him, the Son of God,
who was willing to give His life that we
poor sinners might live. You must drink
in His spirit. You must learn the secret
of His cross; forget yourself in some
loving service for those about you. So
losing your life for His sake — that is
salvation; then you shall find it.

ifefatuar^ tit^t

Arbitration means that you have ar-
ranged things so that two enemies can go
on a little longer without actual fighting.
But reconciliation means that their hearts
have been changed and the old enemies
are friends,

28

Man's cry of need, the exceeding bit-
ter cry, is like the deafening roar of
the surf when the winter storm hurls the
waves far up upon the beach ; this hoarse
cry of hunger, thirst, loneliness, sorrow,
sickness, pain, worry, guilty despair. . ,
We want to get it out of our ears ; we are
weary of it, driven distracted by it. It
breaks in upon our work and our play,
our rest and our worship. Yes, our wor-
ship. Why will not this needy world
give us at least time enough to find some
solitary and restful place where we may
be still and commune with God?

*'No man but Jesus only." We seem
to understand ourselves better when we
are looking simply into His face and lis-
tening to His voice. It was He who led
us up the mountain for the vision. It
must be He who can lead us down to
work.

29

Let us never forget that the bigger
church machine you have the more
power you will need to make it go.
Whether in the days of Elijah, or of the
apostles, or of the Reformers, or in this
bustling nineteenth century of ours, the
only original source of that power is
God; and the way for us to be sure of
commanding that power is to know the
way straight to God in prayer.

The miracle of the loaves is one of
the few events in our Lord's life which
has been described in all of the four Gos-
pels. It was so strikingly illustrative of
Christ's attitude to the world, that even
if the story had been told again and again
and again, each new narrator felt that he
must tell it once more.
30

Paul asked for what he thought he
wanted, to be healed of his painful in-
firmity. But the Father knew, what the
child did not yet know, that to take away
the discipline of that infirmity would be
robbing the child of such spiritual
strength and grace as would be worth to
him far more than any possible bodily
health. So he answered : "My grace is
sufficient for thee ; My strength is made
perfect in weakness ;" and the child, be-
ing a true child, accepted the answer with
great thankfulness — "Most gladly will I
glory in my infirmities."

A shameful thing it will be for any
man to pass through this greatly imper-
illed world without helping a single per-
son in it to nobler, diviner manhood.
31

It is a great comfort if your path has
brought you into trouble, or seems to be
heading that way, to know the Lord will
never send you or any other of His chil-
dren on any hard or painful journey that
He has not already trodden before.

Sftbtnati^ Hints

Are you old enough to remember your
well-beloved New England village back
toward the middle of the last century:
the old meeting house by the village
green, where noisy schoolboys were play-
ing their ball-match yesterday afternoon
— but not this morning? Now yester-
day's victors and vanquished alike are
feeling something of the peace of God,
and as the bell begins to toll you see the
farmers' wagons from miles away up
over the brow of the hill discharge their
living load at the door of the church. For
them the whole population will come to-
gether on this one day of the week to re-
new its communal fellowship. It is a
sweet memory to some of us.
32

$tbmat^ tents

We are living, all of us, in a world re-
deemed at such a cost, and we are treat-
ing it so lightly !

$tbmat^ tlebentg

I wish God would put a double por-
tion of the old prophetic spirit into the
Christians of this land that we might be
well persuaded that He, the God of na-
tions, is as truly interested in the landing
at Plymouth Rock as He was in the
crossing of the Red Sea; as truly inter-
ested in Lincoln's "Emancipation Procla-
mation" as He was in Moses' bringing
Hebrew slaves out of Egypt ; as truly in-
terested in our Declaration of Independ-
ence as He was in the psalms of Moses
and Miriam: so that, if we Americans
should after all make shipwreck of our
great experiment at freedom and right-
eousness, we might know that it would
stir the Divine heart to infinite sorrow
and indignation, as when the Son of God
wept over Jerusalem, saying: ''If Thou
hadst known — if thou hadst known —
even Thou in this Thy day."
33

We should hardly have thought of
saying it at the time, but I think it will be
generally admitted to-day that, through
the last year or two of his life, Lincoln
had become the foremost religious leader
of the American people; that he, more
nearly than any other living man, filled
for us the place of one of the ancient He-
brew prophets ; the man who spoke for
God, and who was able to make others
find the Divine authority of his mes-

It is not necessary to leave one's work
to become a helper of the human race.
Life is made up of small deeds. It was
the giving of a cup of cold water and the
widow's mite that Christ commended.
34

ifefituatg tontittnt^

How often the conviction comes to
us that much of one's progress has been
the wrong way. We are apt to look back
to our childhood as a kind of Paradise.
Those were the days when we had little
knowledge of evil ; hardly knew the voice
of temptation ; and when it would not
have seemed very strange if, some day,
we had heard the voice of the Lord God
walking among the trees of the garden.
But the progress of the years since seems
to have carried us far away from Him,
and to have stained our souls with so
much sin. O that some one would roll
back for us these misued years !

Sftbtmt]^ titttmt^

To minister in any simple way to one
of the least of the Lord's brethren is to
minister to Him. To give bread to the
hungry, or shelter to the naked, or com-
fort to the lonely — any practical service
of humanity — is a true glorifying of God.
35

I like to see a hill now and then. It
cheers the soul to know that those tall
peaks still stand firm in their places. If
any modern reform should ever succeed
in scraping them all into the ocean, many
of us would want to move off to some
other planet. But that shall not be. God's
world will still retain its beautiful and
wholesome variety. Both in this world
of nature and also in the world of His
providence, His human world, there will
be heights and depths, and the heights
will often be growing higher, and, alas,
we may sometimes see the depths grow
darker and deeper. But even that may
not be so disastrous as a dead level for
the whole world.

To become a Christian is to let Christ,
our Elder Brother, lead you into what
was always your birthright as a child of
God.

36

For we know that God is true. He
is kind also, and would deal tenderly
with His children, but, first of all, He is
true. He hates every false way.

iFfiJtuarg nineteenth

Who are our real benefactors? Is it
noi those who have taught us something
about God; who have made virtue and
faithfulness real to us: who have dis-
pelled in some degree the mystery of our
sorrow and doubt: who have given us
hope of pardon for our sins, and hope
that the lost purity may somehow be re-
gained : who have brought us to believe
in prayer ; who have helped us to receive
and know as true that supreme wonder,
which at the same time proves itself the
only key to all the riddles of nature and
man, that the Word of God became flesh
and dwelt among us full of grace and
truth?

37

Remember there is a false silence
which would be as shameful as any false-
ness of speech.

Samson had his laugh out of the Phil-
istine men, but their sisters avenged
them on him, making a slave and tool
and fool of him. The old writer tells his
tale straight on without stopping to mor-
alize much, but where can you find a ser-
mon on the need of personal purity like
this — so magnificently strong; so fatally
and contemptibly weak. Of the two
forms of sin which specially assail young
men Samson may guard us from the one
by way of example, and from the other
by way of warning. Touching no wine,
he excelled in strength ; but he listened
to Delilah, and there quickly followed
weakness, darkness, the prison-house,
the grave. He was a weakling beside
that hero of Tennyson's, who could say :

* * My good blade carves the casques of men ;
My tough lance thrusteth sure ;
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure. ' '

38

No criticism can ever dim the out-
lines of that personal character, that fig-
ure of a loyal gentleman, which stands
erect and firm before the world. . . It
may be open to question how much of
the grand results achieved were due
rather to the extraordinary genius of
Alexander Hamilton and some of his
other associates. There may be differ-
ences of opinion on these lines, but of
Washington's claim to stand among the
few finest gentlemen of all time there
will be no doubt. Like the Psalmist of
old he could have said: *Thy gentleness
hath made me great."

Oh ! in the midst of all this modern
turmoil and clamor — how restful and
wholesome it is now and then to turn our
eyes back to the serene figure of our first
great American, a man whose busy life
still left him time enough for courtesy,
and for dignified reserve, and for
thoughts of honor and duty and loftiest
patriotism.

39

It is nothing to be vain about that you
happened to be born in one place rather
than another, but it is everything to be
thankful for that it was America.

Let us learn to think of our homes
very reverently as the temples of the God
who hath here builded us together into
families; and let us be careful to do
nothing that would destroy or defile this
temple. Any unkind or cruel word — bad
enough anywhere — but spoken at home,
it becomes a kind of blasphemy, breaking
down the walls of the temple of God.
May each of our homes be a place where
the peace of God is never broken ; where
the daily prayer to God never ceases;
where the ancient benediction, "The
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love
of God, the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit," rests upon all as an abiding fact.
40

Our human judgments are apt to be
mistaken. 'The Lord looketh upon the
heart, but man looketh upon the outward
appearance," and even the very wisest
of men may not see very far beneath the
outward appearance. A good deal of
the barbarian is left in us all ; and if we
are eager to pass judgment against our
neighbor, we may often be calling him
bad names, when he really is a saint.
Let us rather leave that to One whose
judgments are all righteous.

Character is a finer thing than knowl-
edge ; holiness is a finer thing than artis-
tic intuition ; the love of Christ is a finer
thing than the friendship of distinguished
people; the sense of God's presence in
the heart is a finer thing than the rapture
of a poet; the hope of an eternal home
on high is a finer thing than the hope of
an immortality of earthly fame.
41

Be sure to find some man's work to
do; pray God to give you some man's
work to do with your strength of body
and your strength of mind, and the nat-
ural, good-humored hopefulness of your
young manhood. That is a prayer you
need not fear to offer in Christ's name;
it is a Christian prayer.

Wherever my day's journey takes me
the wide world over, in life or in death,
I have learned from Christ to bear my-
self, not as a trembling slave, but fear-
lessly as a child in my own Father's
house. That is the liberty with which
Christ has made us free. Let us stand
fast in it, or, if any of you heretofore
have felt yourselves excluded from it,
come into it now.

42

If we could be satisfied and at rest
with mere physical well-being, that would
be a wretched condition. Really starv-
ing, but with no sense of the deadly pain
of it. But this eager, inquisitive, pain-
ful restlessness ; this infinite craving, is a
blessed condition. "Blessed is such spir-
itual poverty."

la^atcS tit^t

Other men labored and we enter into
their labors; we in our turn labor and
perhaps other men may enter into our
labors. We can leave God to assign the
credit as seems good to Him. If only
the fruit is borne ; if only we are ready
in all humility to do our part, working
with others toward the bearing of the
fruit, a day draws near when the harvest
shall be complete, "and he that soweth,
and he that reapeth shall rejoice to-
gether."

43

The right sort of hope, a Christian's
hopefuhiess, must be among the most
tenacious and indestructible things in the
world, for it allies itself with, and ex-
presses itself through, that other word,
which has no sound of fickleness — "pa-
tience."

No man has a right to despair; and,
furthermore, we have no right to despair
of any one when our Master puts him in
our way, and gives us some message for
him. It is no answer to say, ''Lord, he is
too far gone ; he is past saving ; there is
nothing left in him now by which even
Thy grace could take hold of him to re-
deem him." No, no; when the Lord
silenced that objection in the life of
Ananias, He silenced it for us all. "Go"
— that is His only answer to such objec-
tions. "Go !"

44

9?arc8 toixtti

Whether a man is able to live in a
palace, or must put up with a room in a
tenement house, is not the most impor-
tant matter ; whether he can ride in a fine
carriage or must trudge along the crowd-
ed sidewalk; whether he has genius and
can sing or speak, so that the multitudes
love to listen, or his words are such as
no one cares for except a friend or two
who know him best. Those are the
changing accidents of existence. The
important and enduring things are the
qualities of his soul.

Sl?atc8 urn

Every good road in the world repre-
sents some common fashion of traveling
from one place to another. The trouble
is that these fashions of the world are
apt to climb out of their rightful place of
useful service into a place of insolent
command.

45

Whatever faculty of reverence any of
ns now possess, let us make the most of
it, for that is one of the things essential
to any fruitful Christian life. And let
us pray for a quick, sensitive sympathy
with all manifestations of this same sen-
timent among our neighbors, that we
may never needlessly wound or hinder
them in their own sense of looking
toward God.

As we have sins to be forgiven we
can trust Him for their forgiveness. As
we have a long journey to make through
this world, perplexing, difficult, danger-
ous, we can trust Him to guide us in it.
As we have a battle to fight against error
and wrong and sin, we can trust Him as
our commander in it.

46

A judge, who has been appointed to
dispense justice, holds a sacred office.
The Scripture calls him, as truly as it
calls a preacher, a minister of God. And
if this judge's name is Elisha, you will
find him scrupulously sensitive in the
exercise of his sacred office. If Naaman
had had a case tried before him, and the
judge pronounced in his favor, and grate-
ful Naaman had urged some gift upon
him, Elisha would answer, ''As Jehovah
liveth, I will not touch it." We honor
him for the answer. The public con-
science has been sensitive enough to in-
sist that he shall give that answer. We
will not let our judge take pay for his
decision.

a?atc8 nintf\

The real value of money is always in
some useful process or progress that it
can be made to serve.
47

Faith and cowardice arc mutually ex-
clusive. Just so far as a man lets his
faith in such a being as Jesus Christ hold
him up, it is impossible that he should be
afraid of anything or anybody. It makes
him strong and very courageous. And
courage goes so far in this world; it is
what we all need so much. If anyone
has learned where to find a plentiful sup-
ply of it, we can well understand how he
should thank God and go forward.

Nearly all that is best in human life
is gathered within the walls of the
home. Love is there, and truth, and
faith, and praise. It is where we learn
to obey and to command, to enjoy our-
selves and deny ourselves in loving ser-
vice. It is where first we learn to pray,
and to believe in God, and to hope for
heaven.

48

The Son was like His Father in the
quahty of silence. In God's works noth-
ing impresses ns more than the silence of
them. Sometimes of course there will be
sound, beautiful or terrible — the mur-
muring of the wind, the laughing of the
brook, the roar of the breakers, the crash
of the thunder, the shriek of the hurri-
cane— but the greater works are very still.
The sunrise is greater than Niagara ; the
little engines that we make drive you
half mad with their creaking and puffing,
but the machinery which carries earth
and planets round the sun would not
wake the lightest sleeper.

If God has given you some new in-
sight into His word, or some choicer ex-
perience of His grace, or any other good
thing, do not forget to thank Him for
the gift; but do not forget to share the
benefit of it with your friends.
49

Music sometimes stirs us in a way
that mere words cannot stir us. . . A
few notes from a bugle will bring all the
pomp and tragedy of war before you ;
the solemn tones of the requiem will
speak forth your sorrow as all the ora-
tors on earth could never speak it; and
a verse of two of a song by the voice of
a child will sometimes almost lift the
curtain so that we can see the invisible.
I suppose they may be right who say that
music is a language of the infinite, and
makes us aware for a moment of our al-
most forgotten birthright by the side of
God.

9?atc8 titttmt^

Only a few men in any community
can be great, but it is offered to all men
everywhere to be good. The gifts of
genius are rare, and God's methods of
bestowing them to one or another are
beyond our control, but the gifts of char-
acter are God's sunshine ; you have only
to open your eyes to look at it. Like the
pure air of heaven, you have only to open
your windows and open your lungs and
breathe it in.

50

"The Father is seeking." That is the
truth that will make your church dear
and sacred to you who worship in it. In
every part of the service God's activity
comes first. . . Long before any of
us began to worship, the Father was
seeking us to worship.

Friend, parent, lover, whoever you
are who have some injury to forgive, do
not spoil that most sacred exercise of
mercy by your own grudging and reluct-
ant air in performing it. The quality of
forgiveness is not strained. Think what
tokens of Divine joy appear whenever
God succeeds in getting His forgiveness
to any penitent child of His ! ''When he
had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave
them both." That is God's way of for-
giving such debts, frankly, freely, as if
there could be nothing in this world that
He so much liked to do.

51

Human souls cannot be made and re-
deemed by the wholesale, as you would
deal with bales of merchandise. We
may have all sorts of most admirable so-
cieties and charities, whose work is in-
valuable in its place, but, after all, some-
body is waiting for you to reach over
and touch him. Someone is hungering
and thirsting for a little human sympa-
thy from your heart. . . Someone,
somewhere, is waiting for a letter from
you, written with your own hand.

S!?atc8 nintttmt^

Very great wealth, after it is attained,
has been found likely to sap and kill the
very virtues which contributed to its at-
tainment. The old time frugal industry
gives way to luxury and to crazy specu-
lation, and then farewell to national
greatness, and soon farewell to the
wealth also.

52

9?atc8 t^tntittfi

A man must have courage; the cour-
age that rests on faith ; faith in the prin-
ciples on which he is working; faith in
the value of his own work. He must
throw himself into it. Not infrequently
emergencies arise when, if one is to get
any large success, or to keep what he has
already obtained, this courage must rise
almost to the point of audacity ; . . .
like Cortez burning his ships behind him ;
or Grant at Vicksburg cutting loose from
his source of supplies.

Chastening is a grievous thing, and we
naturally try to avoid it for ourselves
and for others, and yet we cannot expect
to avoid it always and altogether. The
chastening will still come to many of
God's children, but, when it comes, and
when they bear it with patience and
courage, it often builds up in them a pe-
culiar kind of strength of character that
they get in no other way.

53

The human countenance is an amaz-
ing countenance, because it actuahy
bridges the chasm between matter and
mind, and brings out visibly before the
eyes of men the secret processes of the
soul ; and the entire drama of human
perdition and salvation, more than all
that the poet Dante wrote into his 'In-
ferno," and "Purgatorio," and "Para-
diso," may be written out visibly in living
characters in the countenance of one
man.

Victory, the gladdest word that ear
can hear, is sounding in our ears contin-
ually, if we will listen for it. And all
the sweet messages of Easter day ought
to make it sound louder for us, so that we
can go back to-morrow into this weari-
some fight with the Devil and all his
works more hopefully. The fight is hard,
but we will no longer call it desperate.
We propose to win it, absolutely, with-
out any compromise at all.
54

Christ's resurrection was the spring-
time of a summer that shall have no end ;
to all eternity light shall triumph over
darkness ; life over death. The resurrec-
tion does not take Christ away from us,
but proves Him nearer than we had ever
thought. It was His victory over death ;
but a victory which He won for all of
us, His brethren.

This Christian religion of ours, in
spite of all that it has to say — and it has
so much to say about sorrow and perse-
cution, and sacrifice and the Cross — is yet
a religion of joy. There was great joy
at the beginning; there shall be greater
joy at the end ; and, in spite of all the
sorrows, by faith in God we have a right
to claim a large share of that joy all the
way through.

55

If Christ is our friend, we do well to
be glad over His resurrection. . .
Perhaps we have a right to be glad even
now, as if the bitterness of death were
already passed. For the worst part of it
has already passed for us, if we have
really committed our lives to this Al-
mighty Saviour of men. . . We are
just as sure that He can take us safely
through the river of death as we are that
He went through it safely Himself.

The phrase "I cannot" does not sound
well from a Christian in reply to any call
to service or sacrifice. Have more faith
in Him who offers the strength for doing
anything He ever bids you do, and for
bearing everything He ever bids you
bear, and then you will be slow to say, "I
cannot."

S6

You can never be sure of the reality
of any virtue in the character of a child
or of a man if you cannot depend upon
his word.

SlJatcS ttutnt^-nintj

The Hebrew prophets had taught the
world — and it was a grand revelation —
that God is righteous ; and right means
straight. You can trust absolutely to the
undeviating rectitude of God. There is
no crookedness in Him. . . And yet
we must know that this righteousness,
straightness, rectitude, does not exhaust
the idea of God. He is all that, but He
is so much more than that. "Straight is
the line of duty," says the old proverb,
''curved is the Hne of beauty." And are
not all the works of God, beyond descrip-
tion, beautiful? . . But grace has
come by Jesus Christ ; the infinite beauty
of God has been incarnated. In Him
the infinite strength has clothed itself
with graceful beauty.

57

!a?atc8 tjitttrtji

The wonderful machinery of banking
holds itself ready to further the opera-
tions of the Lord's host, just as much as
any other operations in peace or war;
and it seems to me that any man who is
accustomed to meet his other financial
obligations by simply signing his name to
a draft, but who in religious matters
still contents himself with bulky silver
and copper, is a good deal behind the
times.

The solid character which Christ
promises to develop in His disciples is
not like a mushroom, but like a slow-
growing tree ; something which it will be
worth while to wait for. And the king-
dom of justice and purity and love,
which will develop in any community
when His gospel is faithfully preached,
is something that it will be worth while
to wait for, even if you should have to
wait many weary years.
S8

siptii urn

Let us not be disobedient to heavenly
visions. The great purpose for which
we are placed side by side in this world
seems to be the giving and receiving of
help ; the giving and receiving of the
light of life. If you have not been
brought into the light of Christian faith.
God directs you to some believer, pastor,
teacher, parent, friend, who can lay his
hand upon you, that you may see. When
you rejoice in that light, God directs yoL
in turn to some one still groping in dark-
ness.

^ptil isieconti

It is a healthy impulse which draws
every thoughtful man at times to be
alone. We need such intervals of quiet
every little while, when we can make ac-
quaintance with ourselves and with our
God.

59

Siptil tgitti

You cannot discharge your full debt
to the state by any mere payment of dol-
lars. And neither can you so discharge
your debt to the Church, to this great
cause of human betterment, which for
us is visibly embodied in the Church of
Jesus Christ. You owe to it, for what it
has been doing and is doing, everything
that makes your life worth living, and
you cannot discharge such a debt by any
payment of dollars.

Siptil toixtti

*'He that soweth sparingly shall reap
also sparingly ; and he that soweth boun-
tifully shall reap also bountifully." Any
large success involves a large measure of
faith ; a large-hearted venture. Leave
your timid paddling on the edge of the
stream ; "launch out into the deep," if
you want your net filled.
60

^ptii am

How many poor fellows have been,
this last week, trying to collect some
small sum of money that was owed to
them, and it means the greatest incon-
venience to them not to have it. Suffer-
ing, ruin perhaps, and yet they have been
put off, and put off, till "a more conven-
ient season," until now some of them are
driven nearly mad by the delay. And if
it is you or I who have been putting
them off, I tell you a day of reckoning
will come, when we may find it as hard
to answer for that sinful procrastination
as Felix for his before Paul.

Siptil ^M^

It is a quick journey that we have to
make through this world, and we shall
not pass this way again. If we are to
help any of our fellow-travelers we shall
have to avoid the habit of proscrastina-
tion. The only really convenient season
for helping any of them is at this mo-
ment, when their path crosses ours.
6i

Siptil ^rbtntfi

''Other foundation can no man lay
than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ."
There may be much comfort in the
thought, for it gives a large-minded in-
difference as to many of the matters that
men contend about. Why interrupt your
brother because he was building with
gold and you with silver? The fire will
try every man's work ; time's testing will
decide. You can afford to be patient.
Wait a little while and whatever ought
to come down will come down. More-
over, no serious damage can be done to
the temple so long as the foundation is
secure.

Stop your false and foolish excuses
for your past sin, that you may have
breath to praise God for His pardon;
and your idle excuses from duty, that
you may have breath to say, ''Here am
I, send me ;" and your complainings over
your woes and imagined wrongs, that you
may have breath to thank God for His
mercies.

62

japtil nintj

The hymns that have in them the
power of lasting through the ages come
to be landmarks of devotion. The great
creeds of the Church Universal come to
be landmarks of the trust of the people
of God.

^ptil tents

After Christ came, and under the in-
fluence of His teaching, a purer senti-
ment on the subject of marriage had
gone on spreading among His disciples
and gaining power down to times which
some of us can remember, when any
known violation of the seventh com-
mandment, if not punished with death,
would have involved a penalty of ostra-
cism hardly less terrible ; times when
either the crime itself, or such separation
as might follow it, was a shameful thing,
to be spoken of only with bated breath
and lowered eye, as when Jesus, hearing
such a tale of shame, stooped down and
wrote with His finger in the sand.

63

Siptil tUtitnt^

While Moses was on the top of
Mount Sinai he had a vision of what the
tabernacle ought to be to make it a
proper place for the worship of Jehovah.
No one else had seen the vision; and
when Moses came down from the mount,
he might no longer see it, but he could
remember it, and he must be careful to
copy it faithfully and patiently. . .
When you have seen any such vision,
you must remember it, so that you can
patiently copy it. The difference be-
tween worthy and worthless men is not
so much in the seeing as in the remem-
bering.

Whatever visions have been granted
us of higher Christian living, for some
of our neighbors we shall have to be the
pattern. Whether we like it or not, they
will take their pattern from what they
see in us.

64

Siptil t^ittttnt^

"Men and brethren, what shall we
do? . . Ever since, I think, in times
of deep conviction, when the experi-
ences of the day of Pentecost are at
all reproduced, it has been found needful
to supplement the public preaching of the
truth by some such personal questioning
and directing, so that each darkened soul
groping for the light may be personally
touched and helped by some one who can
see.

Siptil tontttmt^

Oh, that more of us would dedicate
to the Lord, and always reserve for Him,
that quiet upper chamber of our income,
to which the disturbing question of good
times and bad times is not admitted;
meeting the claims of His cause first;
not letting Him have what is left over,
but rather reserving for ourselves what
is left over.

6s

Siptil tittttnt^

In the deafening babel of our modern
world, do you not long to hear once more
those sweet harmonies of Pentecost, the
voice of that one Divine Interpreter?

Siptil ^itttmti

I suppose we cannot rightly pray for
anything if we are sure that it is against
God's will. To pray that the sun might
rise in the west ; or to pray for any pleas-
ure or treasure that we feel to be wrong ;
or to expose ourselves to some needless
peril from simple recklessness, and then
pray that God will keep us safe ! . .• But
so long as we have not been shown
God's will, it seems to me that we are
entirely free to express any of our de-
sires, and that our heavenly Father is
pleased to have us express them con-
stantly, until it becomes a habit of the
soul to translate all our innocent desires
into spoken or unspoken requests.
66

One duty which we owe to each
other in this world of many sorrows is
consolation. Those who are crushed by
disappointment or affliction need to be
cheered and helped upon their feet again.
And this ministry of helpfulness toward
each other is committed to us all as part
of our Christian duty.

Siptil tiQittmt^

I have heard of a wise teacher who
offered it to her pupils as the very best
advice she had to give them, that "they
should learn always to look pleasant."
All the electrical inventions of the last
fifty years could not do so much towards
brightening and beautifying the streets
and homes of our cities as the women
and girls of those same cities could, if
they would only form the habit of look-
ing pleasant. "Let your light shine," the
Lord said. "Look pleasant."

67

Siptil ninttttnti

In all our relations to the Lord there
is a kind of mutual friendliness, a broad,
human brotherhood; that is the wonder
of this Christian religion. For He is
really a King, and we were bowing low
before Him. But He is not willing to
stand off on His dignity; He is always
lifting us up to His side, taking us by the
right hand. He who did the choosing
has chosen us to be His friends.

"I was in the spirit," says John, "on
the Lord's day." I need not say that the
Lord's day, or first day of the week, has
come to be our holy time. This day,
emptied of work, gives us a chance to get
into the spirit. If you do not succeed in
doing it to-day, you may be very sure
you will not to-morrow. We all need to
get into the spirit, if the nobler part of
our manhood is not to be crushed by the
weight of the flesh.

68

Siptil mmtv-tit^t

It is the one distinguishing mark of
Christian faith everywhere that it brings
the sense of pardon for sin. Among all
the varieties of creed and worship in dif-
ferent parts of the church, eastern and
western, Catholic and Protestant, ancient
and modern, that one mark has never
been altogether lost sight of. The Gos-
pel promises to set guilty men right with
God, and those who accept it feel that
it has kept its promise.

Christ is the pattern for manhood;
Christ, God's dear Son, who showed the
beauty and the greatness of service by
giving His own Hfe for the world. Some
day the whole fabric of human society
will be built over on those lines; and
then it will become the true Temple of
God. The work goes forward now, but
very slowly, because so often men have
lost sight of the pattern.

69

When the Holy City is described to
us in the Revelation as the home of the
blessed, the last touch in the description
is that there shall in no wise enter into
it anything that defileth, neither whatso-
ever worketh abomination or maketh a
lie. The whole teaching of Scripture is
that our God is one whose "truth endur-
eth to all generations," and that His ser-
vant must hate any false way.

Siptil ttotntg-tourtli

There is a tremendous, positive real-
ity about an intense effort of the spirit.
It means the higher nature of the man
struggling for truth and sincerity. Or,
rather, as in the old story of the Patri-
arch, when the angel of God wrestled
with the man, so this is God struggling
in the man to lift his manhood to the
heights of communion and vision. The
Father is seeking such to worship Him.
70

I think we can lay this down as one
of the fundamental rules for prayer, ac-
cording to Christ's teaching: that any
child of God, coming to his Father in the
spirit of childlike trust and obedience,
may ask boldly for anything he thinks he
wants ; for whatever ignorant blunders
he makes in his asking, he can feel sure
that his Father will correct them in His
wise answering.

Nearly all the best comfort in this
sorrowing world comes from those who
themselves have sorrowed heavily and
have been comforted ; indeed the best of
all comes from those who are sorrowing
now and yet are comforted.
7i

That which costs is also that which
well repays the cost. So it is doubtless
true, as a distinguished writer of our day
has said, that "the old masters painted
for joy and knew not that virtue had
gone out of them ;" while, on the other
hand, the first great master of Christian
song also said truly of his greatest poem,
that it had "made him lean for many
years."

The Christian rule for us all in our
daily occupation is to do every piece of
work not merely so that it will look well
done, but so that it will be well done.
For we are God's servants, and God sees
things, not as they seem to be, but as
they are.

When we have tasted and seen how
good the Lord is, we shall always be
looking to see how we can do something
more for someone else.
72

A great responsibility has been laid
upon any man who has been taken up
into the Mount of God's confidence and
shown any of those visions which are
hidden from the eyes of his fellow men.
. . . And if any man, woman or child
of our day has ever seen any part of the
heavenly vision, any gleam of that light
that is shining always from the face of
Jesus Christ — that wonder and patience
of His pardon toward us ; that tender-
ness of His sympathy ; that glory of His
sacrifice for the world — if we know any-
thing of it for ourselves, when we come
down from the mountain you may be
sure that others will be looking at us, and
will see that we have been with Him.

It is easier to be a good Samaritan
than to be an equally good priest. It is
easier to share your oil and your beast
and your money with men than to share
God's salvation.

73

!9l?a? tit0t

Paul proved himself one of the very
greatest of men, in the books that he
wrote ; in the institutions that he shaped ;
in the ruling thought that he introduced
among men ; in the strength of his posi-
tive influence over other souls ; in the
scope of his work ; in his heroic endur-
ance of suffering. By any test of great-
ness in genius and character and achieve-
ment he stands in the highest rank. And
yet his one greatest service to the world
was to be converted; to yield his soul as
sincerely and completely as he did to the
constraining power of the love of Jesus
Christ.

I suppose if we could see the whole
we should know any true service faith-
fully rendered is a preparation for some-
thing larger, sometime.
74

God's justice is as far beyond our
reach as His wisdom or power. But
speak of His kindness, and there is
something we can copy.

You had fallen into some heavy be-
reavement— the darkness of some cruel
loss; and you had been crying to the
Lord for comfort or help, and complain-
ing that the prayer was not heard. And
all the while in the gloomy pre-occupa-
tion of your own sorrow you heeded not
the fact of the great procession passing
your door ; one and another pausing there
a moment, still sadder and lonelier than
you, waiting for some word of cheer
from you. If you could have aroused
yourself from your own grief to bid even
one of them come in, I believe the Lord
might have gladly come in with him to
cheer your soul with His great consola-
tion.

75

A man's own home, or a woman's, if
used hospitably up to the Hmits of its
capacity for the benefit of those who
would profit most by its protection and
cheer, may be the most effective of all
instruments of Christian service. And
if this refuge is not big enough for all
who are wandering friendless in the dark
— and I am afraid it never is — we must
long to provide it. . . It is a great
task laid upon our Christian helpfulness,
to make provision somehow, so that we
can say to everyone, every stranger, who
might ever pass the door, "Stay friend;
abide, for it is toward evening and the
day is far spent."

Your best beginning at serving Christ
is to go straight back to your shop, and
first let your fellow workmen there know
who your Master is.

76

If Jesus Christ was more generously
social than any other socialist, He was
also more intensely individualistic than
any other individualist. While others
were content with the ninety and nine,
He was always looking out for the one.

When men are choosing a new home
they will take account of various con-
siderations : the healthfulness of the
place; the beauty of its situation; the
prospects of making money in it. And
those points sometimes deserve thought.
But, after all, your choice of a home can
hardly be called a happy one in the high-
est sense unless it gives you the acquaint-
ance of some of the men and women
whom you ought to know. Men and
women are the precious commodity in
this world, and no life can be counted
rich if they are left out.
77

''And I, if I be lifted up, will draw
all men unto Me." That is the motive
that has been found strong enough to
change human hearts; the motive that
has been slowly changing even the great
sluggish world itself, as if to give prom-
ise that sometime it will swing the whole
wandering planet back into its proper
course. The motive power of it all is the
Divine love of One who gave His life for
sinful man.

Sl?a^ tents

The will of Jesus is not hidden from
us ; and the heart of the world begins to
understand that all our own highest
dreams of freedom, justice, liberty,
equality, fraternity, human blessedness,
are included in what Jesus willed for His
fellows.

78

No word in the language carries a
sense of more bitter desolation than the
word ''homesick." No song has been
more or more feelingly sung than that
which says, "There is no place like
home." We used to venture out some-
times for short excursions into the great,
strange world, eager for new sights and
sounds, but after a little, especially when
the evening shadows began to lengthen,
we always hurried home. That was the
only place where we could rest, where
we could stay, where we found that we
belonged. It must be that this almost
universal instinct was designed for some
good purpose.

When we are tempted to impatience
toward those whom we call the ignorant,
let us remember that we ourselves do not
yet know quite everything.
79

The moment you begin to render any
of the Christian services freely, because
you love to do it ; because His loving ser-
vice for you has made you love Him,
so that now you outrun the constraint in
your desire to please Him, . . have
you not sometimes found the King,
Himself, your fellow-traveller?

Sl?ag tontttmti

If our character is to be solid enough
to bear examination it must be like that
stone which the prophet spoke of cut out
of the eternal hills, without hands ; not a
human artifice, but God's own work,
God's gift. The true art in the making
of manhood is to put yourself in God's
hands and let Him make you. Every-
thing else is an artifice, more or less of a
sham.

80

ia^ap titteentfi

Sometimes the way to prove that you
are not ashamed of Christ will be to
show that you are not ashamed of some
persecuted servant of His.

"Withhold not good from them to
whom it is due, when it is in the power
of thine hand to do it." That seems to
refer not so much to legal debts, but to
all the manifold acts of helpful service
that we might be able to render to those
in any kind of trouble or need. I am
sure that most of us intend to render
such services sometimes. Any story of
distress moves us. We feel the taint of
pity. But are you not afraid that you
have sometimes delayed to help until the
right time for helping was past? "He
gives twice who gives quickly" is the
proverb, and a vast amount of painful
experience lies back of it.
8i

99 si]^ gitben touts

Kindness is the very essence of good
manners, and selfishness the very essence
of bad manners.

In this wonderful world which God
has made, has He ever made anything
more wonderful than the human counte-
nance? Think of the infinite variety of
it. Of all the hundreds of millions of
people who make up the world's popula-
tion, is there a single one whom you will
be in danger of mistaking for your
friend? . . Think of the beauty of
it ; all other varied forms of loveliness
in mountain, valley, flowers, sea, sky —
are they so entrancing as the beauty of
man or woman? . . Truly the same
God who first commanded the light
to shine out of darkness must be the
same God who moulded the clay into
this illuminating face of man.
82

9?a^ nineteenth

The visible world about us is so terri-
bly engrossing ; its business, its pleasures,
its promised rewards, are so apt to fill
our thoughts, that some of us will find
it hard to remember things unseen. . .
It is a great help to have some definite
time when you shall think of God, and
some definite place where you shall think
of Him; a part of the fixed program of
your life, as invariable as the hour of
your breakfast, or the street and number
of your place of business.

!Sl?ap ttoentietfi

In any time of victory for any good
cause you have it in your power to rob
the victory of its perfect sweetness for
the Lord Himself by just keeping still
when He expected you to rejoice with
Him.

83

God's providence has opened for us
many prison doors, We live in a free
land, so far as external restraints are
concerned. We may go where we choose,
and do and be what we will. But we
must ask Him to make us and our chil-
dren fit for this dangerous liberty.

It often seems to me that the road to
Jericho has been full of two sorts of peo-
ple : priests and scribes who had read
God's law but would not touch the
wounded man; Samaritans who were
sorry for the wounded man and were
willing to touch him, but could not give
him the best kind of help, because they
had never learned to read God's law.
What we need is that the Jericho road
shall be filled with true Christians, who
can both read the law and touch the man,
so as to bring his need and this Divine
help together.

84

Jesus knew so well that He was the
Child of God, and that His Father was
never far away from Him. Everything
He saw in the world used to make Him
think of His Father; — the flowers,, the
birds, the waving fields of grain, the
rains that fertilize the earth, the shining
of the sun, the tumultous day, the silence
of the night, the trembling sea, the solid
land, the solitude of the wilderness, the
crowded market place. This Child of
God found His Father in all these things.

They may come from different quar-
ters but it is the same Temple. The
New Jerusalem opens its gates on every
side, east, north, south, west, that who-
soever comes may, if he will, walk
straight forward into the city.
8s

"As ye go, preach," said Christ to the
twelve whom he had chosen. "As ye
go;" and it would be a good motto for
every traveller who calls himself a ser-
vant of Jesus Christ. "As ye go, preach."
Have some good message from Him that
you can deliver by word or deed to any-
one who ought to hear it from you.

God's will for this world is for a
dominion of perfect fairness and kindli-
ness and peace, such as the prophets and
Psalmist looked for. Even the most
helpless and friendless of men shall be
tenderly cared for, and shall be sure to
get their rights at last. That kingdom
here on earth is God's will, and anyone
who selfishly sets himself against that
blessed and righteous consummation,
whether he be king, or priest, or pastor,
is not the servant of God, but His enemy.
86

99 a^ ttotntp-isstbentli

''For unto whomsoever much is
given, of him shall be much required."
The law is that getting and giving belong
together. Properly speaking they are
only two sides of the one transaction.
Sometimes the one may come first, and
sometimes the other, but wherever either
is found the other ought to appear in
close connection with it. Sometimes you
ought to give out before you can hope to
receive, and sometimes you are bound to
give out after you have received; but al-
ways and everywhere, either before or
after, if you are receiving much from
God's bounty, much is required of you.

You may be a very busy Christian
with a great deal of work to do in the
world, but you can well afford time
enough to keep fresh in your mind the
memory of your own un worthiness.

87

"The true worshippers shall worship
the Father in spirit and in truth, for the
Father is seeking such to worship Him.'*
Ask the careless multitudes who are for-
getting God to-day whether they have
obeyed that — ask your own heart with
fear and trembling how fully you have
obeyed it.

91? a^ tSittietS— SDecPtation 2Dag

In the darkest and stormiest days
that have dawned on this world there
have always been some few heroic souls
who could believe, even if they could not
see, that the sun was still shining in calm
majesty above the clouds; that in spite
of all darkness and tempest God was still
on the Throne. And this confidence has
made men and women strong to do great
things and to bear great things.
88

Some day we shall understand that
many of the things that in the past have
divided the church into parties and sects
— because the people, as God made them,
are so different; because one man likes
to read his prayers out of a book, and
another to speak them directly out of his
own thought; because one enjoys the
freedom of a class meeting and another
the stately order of the cathedral; and
because one with Calvin bows before the
sovereignty of God, and another with
Wesley squarely faces the moral ac-
countability of man; because one has a
taste for the long locks and courtly man-
ners of a Cavalier and another for the
cropped pate of a Round Head, or the
plain dress of a Friend — are reasons why
it must by all means be held together.
Shall the oak find fault with the pine
because no amount of compulsion can
bring them to the same form and color?
God has made them both very good.

89

3|une tMt

The beauty and the power of true
love have always been in the self-surren-
der of it — true love of every kind,
whether of parent for child, of brother
for brother, of friend for friend, but,
most of all, that true love of the lovers
which has kept the old earth singing
through the years.

iuitt isfecoitti

"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy-
self." That was the command, and it
was very good. For to love your neigh-
bor, this is the right beginning of this
whole great duty of love. . . Begin
with your neighbor, the person nearest
to you, mother, father, brother, sister,
wife, child, servant, the person next door
or over the way. Your fellow-citizen :
the person who has been put nearest
you ; whoever it is, begin your loving
with him. That is the Bible order of lov-
ing, and it is the only proper order; for
if you should skip the beginning, you
will never be able to learn what comes
after.

90

31 un^ t^itH

The courtesy of a true gentleman is
the beautiful outer clothing of a strong
body made up of unyielding principles of
truth and right.

3une toutt^

As often as I think what Christianity
was while Jesus Christ was still living
upon the earth, when only the one little
land of Palestine found any advantage
from His coming, and in that one little
land only a few of the towns, and only
very few of the homes could even enjoy
His presence ; and contrast that time with
ours when, all over the world, in every
land, in every city and every hamlet, in
every home, all who love Christ's name
may, and very many do, rejoice in the
sense that He never forsakes them ; that
He always listens to them, guides them,
preserves them, cherishes them, forgives
them, strengthens them, — it comes over
me how large a promise this is : "I am
with you all the days."
91

3|une titti

It was not the noise and confusion
and excitement of the tongues that made
Pentecost glorious ; those were a kind of
accident, not the substance of the Spirit's
work that day. The gift of tongues,'
Paul says — 'why, though I speak with
the tongues of men and of angels — if
that is all of it — I am become as a sound-
ing brass and a tinkling cymbal.' That
does not prove that one has been greatly
blessed. . . What does prove it then ?
Read that wonderful thirteenth chapter
of First Corinthians and you will find
out. It is charity — love.

31une 0iit8

A lie has often been compared to the
stone one loosens upon the mountain
side ; once started it is beyond his reach,
and in its quick descent soon grows into
the destructive avalanche.
92

3unt jsfebentfi

Let us be very careful to keep the
first day of the week for its highest uses.
Our fathers gave it to us. . . An in-
stitution of this sort is precious, but it is
fragile. It took thousands of years in
the building; you can destroy it in a

3lune tisUi

The question comes up whether you
shall take your young children with you
regularly to church on Sunday; there
often seems so little to interest them. . .
I am sorry for any child whose parents
have not furnished him by example and
authority with this most salutary habit
of going to God's house on His day al-
ways, whether he expects much or little ;
for you cannot tell whether shall prosper
either this service or that ; and so the
way to make sure of your share of the
blessings of God's house is to be there
at all seasons.

93

3lttne nintf^

Earthly lovers and friends must die
and leave us sometime, and, even if they
did not, they cannot fully satisfy our
hunger for sympathy, for the nearest and
dearest of them only know us in part.
. . . And so in all ages the human
heart has been growing hungry for some
larger, completer, surer love than this ;
one that would encompass us altogether,
and never fail ; a God, who will care for
us.

3lune tmti

The ideal of a church of Christ must
be that in it all races and conditions of
men should be assured of their common
brotherhood, as children of one Father
and redeemed by one Savior.
94

3|une debentj

I confidently believe that many of us
may find in the chance encounters of each
day wonderful opportunities for telling
men and women of Jesus Christ.

3lune tbJdttfi

We all need to learn, and the earlier
the better, that some things must not be
determined for us by the pleasure of
other people. "Be just before you are
generous," says the proverb, and so we
might say, "Be true before you are cour-
teous." To give pleasure to your neigh-
bors is a good thing in itself, or to avoid
giving them pain, but if this good thing
has to be attained through any sacrifice
of your own truth, through any betrayal
of your own convictions, that is too high
a price.

95

3lune tSirteentJ

Every believer's life ought to be a
victorious life; victorious over tempta-
tion, for life is a fight against temptation.
Every believer in Jesus must know that
life is a fight for personal character. It
is very hard, and yet, if you will believe
in Jesus, you have to believe that victory
can be won ; that He won it, and that by
His help you can win it.

31 un^ toutttentj

What difference can it make to God
whether we love Him or not? He is so
great and there are so many of us. . .
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God," is
the first great commandment of the law.
. . . He cares so much about it that
if any single child of His fails to love
Him, He misses and longs for the affec-
tion of that one child. Incredible or not,
that is the Gospel.

96

31une titUmt^

The grandest occupation yet discov-
ered is to help some one else toward the
truth which one has seen ; to help some
one else toward the goodness which one
has practised and enjoyed; to help some
one else toward the Saviour by whom one
has himself been saved. . . And so
we find that missionary work, whether
at home or abroad, is the great Christian
occupation. By word and deed the faith-
ful Christian is constantly saying to
brother and neighbor and all : ''Come,
hear, see, know, love, trust, our Lord
and Saviour, Jesus Christ."

It is startling to think what might
come of it if our ambitious requests
should always be granted according to
our foolish wording of them.

97

31une 0t\)tntttnti

We have to avail ourselves of social
machinery. Our very charity is no long-
er from hand to hand, but most of it
through great societies. So our v^ork of
the evangelization of the world. . . But
let us take the more pains to remember
that, after all, men are not mere indis-
tinguishable atoms of society to be dealt
with by the wholesale. They remain, as
they always have been, separate living
souls, to be saved, if they ever are saved,
one by one, by somebody's separate at-
tention.

3lune eiffSteentS

The one great question for every man
is. Has the comforting and protecting
presence of God come into his life, or
not? — so that in all times, whether of
solitude or companionship, strength or
weakness, in the light or in the dark, the
man can lift up his face and say, as Jesus
used to say, "Father," and be sure he is
heard.

98

3|une ninttttnt^

"When thou art converted strength-
en thy brother," Christ said to Peter;
and how well the man did it. What a
tower of strength that man was to the
little church in Jerusalem, and to all
trembling sinners, who were looking for
salvation ! . . And if any of us can
be really converted, and turned with
all our hearts into the service of Christ,
the same thing will be true for us, I be-
lieve. We cannot keep the results of it
to ourselves. Those about us will have
to get some of the benefit.

31une t^tntitt^

There is a whole great world above
us of holiness and beauty, and truth and
self-sacrifice, which often I cannot see,
but which I am sure is of all worlds the
best worth seeing, and the hush of the
holy Sabbath gives me my best opportun-
ity to make an acquaintance with it.
99

_ .-fc^^

There is such a different tone in the
earnest hopefulness of Jesus Christ for
men, from that comfortable selfishness
of one who is simply unwilling to be dis-
turbed with thoughts of his sin and peril,
and who calls this "hoping for the best."
May Jesus Christ give us His own pa-
tient and unconquerable hopefulness
towards all the nations of men !

These earthly sanctuaries make us al-
ways think of the heavenly sanctuary.
For heaven means to us the place where
God always abides; where His people
shall always see His face. Heaven is the
Father's house — His mansion; it is His
home.

God is love," and a man or a church
that abides in the spirit of love and the
practice of loving service — you may be
sure that God Himself abides in that
church, or in the heart of that man.
100

The Creator has filled us with in-
numerable and insatiable appetites. If
we should ever get them all satisfied it
would mean that the time had come for
life to end, and the wheels to stop. So
long as we have a right to live, every soul
of us (if we knew enough to speak the
truth) must say: "1 am an hungered —
give me to eat."

3lunr ttoentg-fouttj

Paul recommends to Timothy to learn
to think of himself and God as mutually
trusting each other. I have to trust him
for all sorts of benefits present and fu-
ture, and my only hope is His faithful-
ness to me. But at the same time, and in
connection with the same interests. He is
trusting me. I want God to keep faith
with me and I must learn how to keep
faith with God.

lOI

3unr ttoentp-tittji

Unless the flesh is to conquer and
spiritual religion to vanish from the
earth, earnest men and women will have
to go on denying themselves a great
number of fleshly indulgences and in-
clinations. Some of them for your own
sake, because they war against your soul
and hinder your spiritual progress. Some
of them for your neighbor's sake, because
they would cause him to stumble and
weaken your influence with him. Some
of them for your Lord's sake, because
they would interrupt in some way your
service of Him.

3lune ti3)mt^-^i^t^

If you willfully shut any Christian
away from your sympathy, you are shut-
ting up one window of your soul, exclud-
ing from yourself some part of the
knowledge of Christ's infinite goodness.
102

The kind of knowledge of God that
our Christian religion offers to us all is,
not of a distant being whom we can rea-
son about, but of a friend dear and near
whom we can know ; a Father in heaven
in whose daily care we can trust. Through
Jesus Christ, God has become personal
in human life.

3une tbjfntg-dffStS

A man who is in the habit of boast-
ing to himself that he is fully as good as
he ought to be ; who has no sense of
shortcoming and ill-desert; no humble
penitence, does not come up to the mark ;
he lacks one of the requisites. He may
be scrupulous to pay his debts; he may
be charitable in an easy, goodnatured
fashion ; but there is a kind of sweetness
and beauty of soul you do not find in
that man, and which he will never gain
until someone teaches him the grace of
humble penitence.

103

3lune ttoentg-nmtS

I can imagine that those men who
had enjoyed the Lord's friendship, when
He was upon the earth, would have often
grown eloquent afterwards in telling
others how good a friend He was, and in
how many ways His friendship had been
delightful to them. They might speak
of the charm of His manner, the power
of His eloquence, the healing of His
touch, the depth of His insight, the
breadth of His sympathy; all the quali-
ties that made His friendship sweet and
attractive; but it seems to me the one
quality in this friendship they would love
best to describe would be its constancy.

3une t^ttitt^

HI had to give up all the rest of
the Gospel and keep just one parable, I
think I should choose the parable of the
Prodigal son.

104

3lul^ tit^t

You cannot get away from your
Father's house by traveHng away from
what men call your home. No matter
where you go, you have not escaped His
oversight, or the binding force of the
rules that He has established for the
guidance of His children.

3|ul^ 0econti

Men are what we want. Not mere
depositories of information — your library
is that ; or calculating or investigating
machines — your laboratory is, that; but
men who have really come to themselves ;
who have been lifted out of the disorgan-
ized mass of commonplace humanity ;
who have some personal conviction and
personal character, and, therefore, in the
long campaign of light against darkness,
order against chaos, right against wrong,
heaven against hell, can exert some per-
sonal force for determining events.
105

gulp tSirb

No nation will ever be fit to govern
itself freely except as its citizens are
severally learning how to obey God. We
as freemen are not fit to make laws for
each other until we ourselves have some
sense of the sacred authority of the law
of righteousness itself as established by
God.

3|ulg fourth— Snti^peittience 2Da?

The Bible teaches us that the state
has a Divine sacredness of its own as
truly as a church ; that God concerns
Himself with the doings of Cyrus or
Caesar as truly as with the doings of
Aaron or Caiaphas. Therefore to a
Christian man every patriotic service
which he is able to render becomes a
most sacred part of his obedience to his
Lord. And so, when he looks upon the
strong bonds of law and justice which
hold the whole fabric of the nation to-
gether, however they may appear to oth-
ers, his faith enables him to see in them
God's own handiwork.
1 06

im urn

True loyalty has never meant blind
obedience to any human decrees. The
truest loyalist has always been a man
who could show, on occasion, that he was
not afraid of the king's commandment.
To one only can we bow with unquali-
fied allegiance. We can to Him; we
must to Him — the King, whose right it
is to reign ; the King, who is most kingly,
the true representative of all His people,
the highest and the lowliest.

gulp 0m^

The greatest of all landmarks of time,
most venerable with age, most significant
with accumulating associations, is the
weekly day of rest and prayer ; the one
day of seven saved from the bondage of
toil and dedicated to the glorious liberty
of the children of God.
107

We have found the second mile a pe-
cuHarly pleasant subject of meditation :
that second mile where you have pressed
on beyond the region of hard compul-
sion, and are rendering your service,
whatever it be, with a willing heart and
gladly. That is the best mile to travel.
We find it so in every relation of life, as
parents and children, masters and ser-
vants, buyers and sellers, friends and
lovers ; when the ready performance has
outrun the irksome obligation, then it
becomes free and glad.

3ul^ tism

Just so far as we can satisfy our-
selves that we are now in the work He
intends for us, we have a right to believe
that we shall carry it through success-
fully.

io8

3lul? Hints

"If there be first a willing mind, it is
accepted according to that a man hath,
and not according to that he hath not."
Not the amount of work done, but the
wilHngness, readiness, to do it, deter-
mines how acceptable it shall be in God's
eyes. . . He rates men in their vari-
ous studies, trades and professions, I am
very sure, not according to the profits
they have been able to draw out, but ac-
cording to the honest work they have
been willing to put in.

3ul? tmti

"Thou gavest also the good spirit to
instruct them and withholdest not thy
manna from their mouth." You have all
your favorite texts which have taught you
so much, and have grown so dear to
you that you like to turn them over and
over again for further help and instruc-
tion. Among them I am disposed to
count this beautiful saying about the
wandering of the Children of Israel in
the wilderness.

109

3ul^ debentj

The prayer that our Lord has taught
us is not that God's will may be done in
heaven, but that God's will may be done
"in earth as in Heaven;" and that His
"Kingdom may come" in earth as in
heaven. . . And friends, this is what we
must believe — this kingdom of heaven on
earth. Until we do, we shall never know
the sweetness and glory and power of the
Christian faith.

3lul? ttodttH

The spirit first, then the bread. I like
to work this Christian chronology into so
simple a matter as the order of events at
my dinner-table. I am sure the bread
tastes better, and strengthens and re-
freshes me more, if I can speak some
word in the spirit of thanks to God first.
IIO

The whole religion of Jesus Christ is
the one supreme and eternal embodiment
of absolute unselfishness.

3lul? toutttmt^

We must root ourselves more deeply,
for we need roots. Whatever good thing
God may have for us in the future will
grow somehow out of the present, and
our present is rooted in the past. All
history teaches that a man is no safe
guide for the future, unless he knows
how to study and venerate the past : he
can have no discernment for God's lead-
ings in the future, unless he can see, and
loves to see, the steps by which God has
been leading us and our fathers in the
past. Such a man is rooted, and will not
be "tossed to and fro, and carried about
with every wind of doctrine."
Ill

3|ulp fifteenth

When we have learned from Jesus,
there will be no time left to worry that
so little has been done for us, for we
shall be always wondering how we can
do more for someone else. When we
have learned from Jesus, it will seem to
us that the choicest opportunity of all is
that of doing a kindness or a service for
some neighbor.

The Holy City, whether in heaven or
on earth, stands for the grand consum-
mation of all things ; the reward for all
the labors of God's saints ; the end of all
their hopes and desires ; the final answer
to all their prayers. It is John's emblem
for that one, far-off. Divine event to
which creation moves.

112

Our Lord, foreseeing His own death,
bade His disciples take up each a cross
and carry it after Him. If any Christian
in becoming thoroughly Christlike seems
without this burden, be sure that it is be-
cause he has learned so willingly to bear
his cross — not because it has been lifted
from his shoulders.

To win a faith in God will mean hard
working sometimes, and hard fighting
sometimes, and hard fighting and much
patient enduring. That is the way other
men have learned ; it is the way your
father learned to believe and pray. And
every year will give you plentiful oppor-
tunities— every day of every year is full
of them — for driving back cruel, insolent
doubts, and winning a faith that shall be
yours to keep forever.
113

31ul? ninttttnti

There is always a kind of pain in de-
priving ourselves of some good thing
that we might have kept. Even the gift
you offer to one you love dearly, and
which fills your own heart with generous
delight, costs you something; else it is
no gift of yours; and that cost means
pain.

It is seldom that our brotherly affec-
tion is strong enough of itself to bring
us into full sympathy with those who are
deeply afflicted. Therefore some past af-
fliction of one's own is needed, common-
ly, to open his heart wide to the sorrows
of another. So it is that deep personal
sorrow is often the price which those
have paid who are able to minister most
helpfully to others.

114

The Christian religion has furnished
us with words, a large stock of them;
common words, that do not look as if
they had their Sunday clothes on, and do
not sound as if they belonged only in
church; common words, such as the
whole world understands, and any man
might speak naturally anywhere. Among
the best of them are these : "Be ye kind."

3|ulg ttoentg-!2(econti

The gentleman of to-day, if he be
really worthy of the name, will not feel
the impulse to draw his robes more close-
ly about him when he chances to come
into the presence of someone lowlier
born than himself, for he finds no better
use of that courtesy of his — that costly
product of so many centuries of social
evolution — than to make it set him most
quickly on a social level with everyone
whom he meets in the great brotherhood
of mankind.

115

What shall one say of the human
creature who never lifts his hand — does
no stroke of useful work from his cradle
to his grave — because of the oppressive
memory of some good thing that his
father did. If he could only forget!
Have you not always liked that answer
of Napoleon's marshal, when one of the
aristocratic courtiers of Austria asked
about his ancestor? 'We have none,"
he answered proudly ; ''zve are the ances-
tors."

A man who openly carries with him
the name of Jesus Christ escapes almost
altogether a good many of the common
forms of temptation. People do not
offer them to him. They know that it
would be of no use; often they are a
little ashamed to do it.
ii6

Reverence involves a confession of
something above you, and also your
habit-'ial adjustment of yourself to it.

'The length, the breadth, the depth,
the height," that seems the proper meas-
ure for love. There's a wideness in it
like the wideness of the sea. And yet
it remains true that in some respects the
way of true love must be a narrow way.
In the most sacred ordinance of human
love, have we not often listened to that
solemn and most exclusive mutual vow,
'^forsaking all others keep thee only unto
her;" "forsaking all others keep thee only
unto him ?" It is a narrow path which al-
lows no shadow of deviation, just be-
cause it is a path of truest love. Need
we wonder then, if the love which a dis-
ciple owes his Lord should show the
same unyielding exclusiveness?
117

31 ul? ttoent^-jSebentS

If there should be anyone . . .
who cannot be converted and become as
a Httle child at least once or twice in a
year, he may as well go out of the church
at once; for we are told that with such
a temper of heart he can by no means
enter the kingdom of heaven.

We are on trial, all of us ; all our lives
long we are on trial. Other people are
passing judgment upon us for all that we
do, or leave undone ; for all that we say,
or leave unsaid. Some of our neighbors
accuse us, probably, and some excuse,
and some approve. . . A man must
be content to be condemned by many
about him and appeal his case to the
highest court he knows of. . . To
which Coesar will he appeal?
ii8

Learn to make your yea mean yea,
and your nay mean nay; and as soon as
people learn that you are that sort of a
talker, they will be glad to listen to you
without need of any startling exaggera-
tion, and to believe you without need of
any oath. . . Christ's rule may sound
like a commonplace, but it works; it is
the practical way of making a start
towards ridding the world of this curse
of falsehood.

3ul? mttitt^

The birth of Jesus brought into the,
world an influence for peace and good
will which must as certainly overcome
all the forces of human selfishness and
hatred and wrong as the returning sun
will conquer the winter's cold.
119

The world is hungry for justice, and
sometimes even now you may hear the
angry, inarticulate muttering of that
fierce appetite. We are hungry for honor
and truth and beauty and faith; for the
reconciling of quarrels, and the forgive-
ness of injuries, and neighborly kind-
nesses ; and for love — a very little of that
goes further than all the loaves that
money would buy. We are hungry for
love; and God is Love.

^UQU^t tit0t

"He hath made us Kings ;" oh ! let us
earnestly beseech Him to qualify us for
the high office so that we may fill it
worthily.

120

Our Lord's words urge upon us a
very careful reverence. ''He that swear-
eth by the temple, sweareth by it, and by
Him that dwelleth therein ; he that
sweareth by heaven sweareth by the
throne of God and by Him that dwelleth
thereon." I wish we might all take these
words to heart as they bear upon the
reverence or irreverence of our own hab-
its of daily speech. . . Some of us,
who would never willingly take the name
of the Lord in vain, do seem inclined to
come as near as we well can to such an
offense without actually committing it.
We are inclined to emphasize our speech
with exclamations that, while they are
not exactly curses, yet sound so much
like them that they serve very nearly the
same purpose in our conversation.

121

You ought to make the most of thai
incalculable blessing, the safe and restful
quiet of your own home at evening. The
memory of past storms must not disturb
it. The apprehension of to-morrow's
storms need not disturb it. A day at a
time is the sailor's rule. ''Take no
thought for the morrow." ''Sufficient
unto the day is the evil thereof." "Be
glad because you are quiet." Do not be
afraid to indulge your gladness to the
full when you have been brought to so
desirable a haven. Many a man who
wears out, and breaks down, and goes to
pieces, long before the proper time, might
have held on bravely and kept on to the
end of the voyage, if only he had been
wise enough to have availed himself of
the comforts of this safe harbor, which
God was offering him every evening, at
home.

Loving men is the scriptural rule for
knowing God.

122

Human gladness is not manufactured
by the wholesale. "Little deeds of kind-
ness, little words of love," are what
''make this world an Eden, like the Heav-
en above ;" but you must be quick to say
those words, and must do those deeds in
time.

I am glad that the Lord has set us,
for our constant daily copying, an exam-
ple of a sort of good will which rises
above all our moral differences and dis-
criminations ; a good will that leaves no-
body out, saint or sinner. Christ en-
courages you to try to live your life in
such a temper that all hearts will be a lit-
tle kinder because of your kindness ; all
other lives, good or bad, a little brighter
because of this light that has been shin-
ing upon them impartially from you.
123

If you are the children of the Father
in heaven, you will have to learn to do
your loving like God's rain and sunshine.
Not loving your neighbors only, for even
the publicans do that. But you must get
this diviner quality of God's own sun-
shine into your loving: the sun that
shines on the evil and on the good alike ;
and of the rain that falls in gentle bene-
diction on the fields of the just and of
the unjust alike.

If there is any cross that our sin has
nailed us to, on the cross that stands
closest to ours we see Jesus ! His mis-
sion is to separate us from all that is bad
in us, and that is why He has come so
near. He comes nearer to me than my
own sin ; He comes between it and me.
124

^[iQH0t nintg

There are two worlds in which men
Hve; a world of rigid retribution, where
every debt will be exacted to the last
farthing, and another world of mercy,
forbearance, forgiveness ; and we men
can have our choice which world we
shall live in, but we cannot live in both.
We cannot be taking forgiveness from
God and at the same time refusing for-
giveness to men.

SLitQU^t tents

It would rule out so much censorious-
ness and uncharitableness ; it would pre-
vent so many misunderstandings ; it
would forbid so many quarrels between
nations and men; it would bless human
life everywhere with such beautiful
courtesy, if we ctpuld let Jesus Christ
teach us all His lesson of compassion.
125

Sometimes the answers to our prayers
are at the threshold before we are will-
ing to let them in. May the Lord in-
crease our faith. May He show us that
the Divine time is now, and the Divine
place is here ; that this present world of
ours is the great miracle; that God is
among us, God in Christ, now reconcil-
ing the world unto Himself.

The great burden of the world's guilt
is not made up of its sins of commission ;
not at all. Those are bad enough, but
at the worst they are occasional and of-
ten accidental. But it is these lifelong,
uninterrupted sins of omission that have
been heaping up that intolerable burden
which only the infinite goodness of God
can ever forgive.

126

^UQU^t tfiirtontj

What the Gospel encourages us to be-
heve as Christians is that you and I, as
well as Peter and John, may have a share
in God's own blessed work of peopling
his heaven, not with helpless cripples, as
if heaven were a hospital for incurables,
and the church an ambulance for gather-
ing them up and carrying them there ;
not that ; but in God's work of peopling
heaven with true servants and soldiers of
Jesus, men and women who may have
been helpless once through their sin, but
who have now been redeemed, healed,
made strong to bear hardness and endure
temptation, and run their race with pa-
tience.

<auffU!2it tonttttntfi

Here you have found yourself called
to do something for your Master ; that is
to say, something that evidently needs
to be done for Him, and it was you who
discovered the need ? That discovery by
you constitutes your call.
127

SiiXQU^t titttmt^

*'Our neighbors ; . . whether they
know it or not, every one of them still
bears upon him, however defaced, some-
thing of the Divine image and super-
scription. The stamp on the old coin was
Caesar's, but the stamp on the man is
God's.

What we need in every kind of Chris-
tian helpfulness is the element of person-
al human communication. No man must
expect any other man or company of
men to carry him into the Christian
church and all the privileges of the Chris-
tian faith. It cannot be done. Some
kind neighbor may help me to my feet,
and show me the open door, and speak
his words of encouragement and persua-
sion ; but God has left it for me to make
up my own mind to walk in.
128

The men who are earnestly trying to
be better are not the ones who care to
spend much time over excuses. No one
can have a worse opinion of their past
than they themselves have. . . The
reason why they are not crushed by the
weight of past guilt is, that, so far as
possible, they turn from the past alto-
gether. Their hearts are fixed on' better
things for coming days.

SiiiQii^t tiQf^tttntfj

We must never degrade the musical
part of worship by thinking of it as
merely intending to give us pleasure, a
contrivance of sweet sounds to please the
ear. It is the very highest form, the most
expressive form of our address to God,
and of His gracious words to us.
129

SiuQu^t nmetontj

Quietness is good manners ; it is good
art ; and it is also good religion. Quiet-
ness— the modesty of nature. If there
must come public observation, notoriety,
it ought to come by the necessities of
one's work.

Our danger is always that, like the
Israelites of old, we will not enter into
our promised land because of unbelief.
And one common and ruinous form of
unbelief is that which credits no utter-
ance of God, unless it be nineteen hun-
dred years old ; which accepts the super-
natural only as a far-off fact; which has
no knowledge of a Word of God nigh,
even in the mouth and heart; which can-
not believe in a God now with us, acting
by His Almighty power, speaking from
His infinite wisdom, here, in our midst.
130

^uQ:u0t mtntis-tit0t

It is often a painful responsibility to
take our turn at leading, when we have
been used to follow. We might not al-
ways be ready, even when the full time
had come, to take this responsibility
upon ourselves; and, so, do we not often
observe how Providence, with stern kind-
ness, forces the duty upon us ? . . Soon-
er or later, I think, it is intended
that every human being should walk re-
lying directly upon God Himself; all
other props, all other guides, being put
aside.

He was called a man of sorrows.
We are told how He wept and not how
He laughed; and yet the word which
must be joined eternally to the name of
Jesus Christ is not sorrow, but joy; not
disappointment, but infinite satisfaction.
131

When a plain man named Martin
Luther ventured to take God at His
word, believing that he through faith in
Christ might come straight to his heaven-
ly Father and confess his sin, and know
that he was forgiven, that seemed alto-
gether incredible. It was hard to get
anyone to accept so simple and human
and natural a truth. But so fast as men
did accept this simple human truth, it
meant that most tremendous religious re-
vival which we call the Protestant Refor-
mation, and it was a faith strong enough
to shake the whole world.

The Giver of all good gifts is very
generous and He is very rich; and His
soul will be grieved if He sees only the
poorer and cheaper benefits accepted.
132

"The ways of Wisdom are pleasant-
ness and her paths are peace." It is not
always an easy road to start in, or to
walk in; it is often up-hill work — there
is no doubt about that — but it leads
into a pleasant country. And even the
path itself grow pleasanter and pleas-
anter, the further it leads you into that
pleasant country.

A Christian's great business in this
world is not to get or to keep, but to
give. That is the rule, and everything
else is exception. ''Ye know the grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though
He was rich yet for your sakes He be-
came poor, that ye through His poverty
might be rich;" and it is enough for the
disciple that he be as his Master. The
emblem of Christian blessedness is not
the whirlpool, always sucking in and al-
ways empty, but the spring, always giv-
ing out and always full.
133

Can we not find a cheering, service-
able, workday, everyday example in the
earlier years of Jesus? Three years of
pubHc ministry in the eyes of the world,
but twelve quiet years of childhood, eigh-
teen quiet years of youth and early man-
hood, in little Nazareth, only known as
"the son of Joseph the carpenter."

It seems to me the highest ideal of
Christian worship must be when they
all come together, the bond and the free,
the subject and the king, the poor and
the rich, the small and the great, and all
take in what they can from the common
message of good news, and all give out
what they can to the common response
of gratitude and praise.
134

Christianity stands upon the earth;
it is not "up in the air" as the saying is.
With all its glorious visions of the New
Jerusalem, it does not forget that a liv-
ing man v^ill need bread to eat. "Moral
ideas rule the world," Emerson said
somewhere, "but at close range the
senses are imperious." Christianity re-
members that, and knows how to deal
with life at close range.

The Bible has not so much to say of
God's love for souls as of His love for
men; His love for a man; the whole of
him, body, soul and spirit. . . He
counts the very hairs of your head; He
looks after every part of you with a
jealous care, not willing that any part of
your value shall be lost.
135

Jesus, whatever else He may have
been, was through and through the most
thoroughly human man that ever lived;
took up into Himself most completely
our human nature. That was in part the
reason why He made so deep an impres-
sion on the men of His generation, and
also why His influence has continued and
increased in the world ever since. Other
men touch us at a few points ; He touches
us everywhere. We cannot get away
from Him. A^ll the social and political
questions of our day, even more than
those of His day, are pervaded by His
human presence and await His deep hu-
man decision. It is from this solid basis
of humanity, believing Jesus the truest
man that ever lived — the one altogether
true man that ever lived — that one's faith
may rise to the view of the God mani-
fested in Him.

136

^tpttmbtt tit^t

Some of us have been apt to think
that our service of God must always be
some kind of action — doing ; and the hand
is the instrument of service. At other
times we are apt to think that the service
of God must be some kind of speaking —
noisy talking or singing; and the tongue
seems the chief instrument of service.
But there are times when the most ac-
ceptable service of God will be listening ;
not doing, and certainly not speaking, but
listening; and then the instrument of
service will be the ear. It is to be noted
that the Creator gave us two ears and
only one tongue, as if to show us which
kind of service He would have us render
more constantly. And the Scripture says
to us in plain terms : ''Let a man be swift
to hear, slow to speak."

What a wonderful sign it is of God's
wisdom and goodness — a little child!
137

This common humanity, which knows
how to pour oil and wine into bodily
wounds, is more common than the Chris-
tian charity which knows how to bind up
wounded spirits also.

The world about us is in sore need of
good cheer, and if we have any on hand
our neighbors ought to get the benefit
of it.

f^tpttmbtt toixtti

I always like the sentiment of the
churchgoer of an earlier day who said
that even from the dullest preaching he
could get his profit, for then God Him-
self took up the text and preached a ser-
mon on patience.

138

We all profess to believe in the Holy
Ghost. It is one article of our creed,
and most of us find it easy to believe
while we hold Him far enough away —
far back in the past when God used to
talk with men ; or far forward in the fu-
ture, in the last days, when God shall
again talk with men. But to believe in
the Spirit of God as an ever-present fact,
here, now, speaking into your heart and
into mine; with no need of angels, but
God Himself dealing directly with a
plain man like me; whenever men begin
to believe in the Holy Ghost in that fash-
ion, it is the day of Pentecost over again,
and the power comes upon them.

^tpttmbtt glints

In all the beauty of visible form and
audible sound we still remember the tru-
est temple of God is a human heart.
139

Gentle-man — take this term with all
the richness of meaning that has ever
been associated with it ; the purity and
truth, and courage and honor, and cour-
tesy and self-sacrifice ; and remember
that the name belongs, first of all, to
Jesus Christ.

September tiq^t^

All other labor reforms put together
are of less permanent value to the race
than that one reform which was accom-
plished when Moses said : "Six days shalt
thou labor and do all thy work, but the
seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord
thy God ; in it thou shalt not do any
work, thou nor thy servant." Pleasure
is innocent enough in itself, but it occu-
pies a dangerous proximity to sinful sel-
fishness. A Christian ought to have
pleasure ; he ought to be pleased often ;
but a man who spends his time pleasing
himself, who seeks pleasure, has not yet,
received the mind of Christ; for "He
pleased not Himself."
140

^tpttmbtt Hints

What Samson teaches us by way of
warning is that we must get something
which he had not — some steadfast, en-
nobhng service worthy of whatever
strength God has given us. That is the
safeguard against temptation. DeUlali
would have had Httle chance at the hero
if he had had something to do. Laugh-
ter is to cheer a man in his work, not to
take the place of his work. Games and
sports are for the spare holiday, or for
evening's refreshment when day's task is
done ; the long day itself is not a game
or a joke.

^tpttmbtt tmt^

If God's spirit is still living and mov-
ing in the world, we expect changes and
growth, and progress and new light
breaking forth from His Word and from
His works ; and we want eyes to see them
when they come.

141

All the common relations of daily
life are claimed by the Lord who has
bought us with a price to be His.
In all the relations of daily life, He
calls us to be saints. . . The of-
fice of a saint is very hard to fill. Real
saintliness in business and social life is a
difficult attainment, but we may go at it
hopefully, remembering that it is God
who has called us, each one of us, to be
saints.

I tremble to think how God's ear has
been wounded by the harsh chorus of
profanity which has never ceased to in-
sult Heaven since He first gave man
tongue to speak. Yet perhaps the
Father's ear is still more cruelly wound-
ed by the strange conspiracy of silence
which so often falls upon His children
when we ought to be speaking His name.
142

^epttmbn tfjitttmt^

Any man who will honestly face the
qnestion of how much he owes to the
Christian religion, and how he ought to
pay the debt, is likely to find himself fac-
ing another question, deeper and more
personal : ''How much do I owe to Jesus
Christ, and how ought I to pay that
debt?"

^tpttmbtt (outtontfi

It is in the air — this impulse to rally.
And for obvious reasons. The season of
intense heat when men must rest and
work more sluggishly has gone by and it
is now time to study and work. It is as
natural that people should rally more
earnestly in all their enterprises every
twelve months in the fall as they should
wake up every twenty-four hours in the
morning when daylight comes.
143

^tpttmbtt tiftontS

The mere acquiring of knowledge is
not the only purpose of education. We
want also the development of character.
Our schools must be turning out each
year some fine product of manhood and
womanhood; not merely a lot of calcula-
ting machines, or of repositories for his-
toric and scientific facts, but fully-grown
men and women. One main problem of
education is how the acquiring of knowl-
edge can be made to further this develop-
ing of character.

If you have mixed up with your re-
ligion any private greed, or spite, impel-
ling you to do this or that for your own
sake, and call it for the Lord's sake, pray
God to set that evil thing out alone in its
native ugliness, where you may see it for
what it is. It must not be covered with
the sacred cloak.

144

The great gifts of nature are poured
out with an undiscriniinating hand. We
men attempt our various discriminations
among ourselves with our cramped roofs
and low fences, but think of such a Di-
vine treasure as the sky, which roofs us
all; that blue dome, as Emerson says,
where romance and reality meet : the
covering for the market and for the
Cherubim and Seraphim — a miracle hurl-
ed into every beggar's hands. Even the
unworthiest of the children cannot re-
fuse that gift from the Father.

I am afraid it is easier for most of us
to believe in the most prodigious won-
ders of nineteen hundred years ago than
in the simplest example of God's provi-
dential care for you and me and those
whom we love ; and yet this last is the
really important and blessed faith.
145

^tpttmbtt nintttmt^

God forbid that any one whom you
have called friend should ever have just
cause to say to you, *'You failed me in
my time of temptation."

September ttoentietj

If your soul is worth more than the
riches of the whole world, yours is not
the only precious soul in the whole
world. And if ever you learn to respect
yourself and value yourself as you de-
serve, because of God's favor to you, you
will learn to value your neighbors and re-
spect them because of God's favor to
them; not because this man happens to
be witty, or that man learned or wealthy,
or the next man famous, but because
Christ shed His blood for all of them.
146

It is a great safeguard against mod-
ern delusions to have some respectable
acquaintance with what good people have
said and thought before we came upon
the scene.

To harm your body willingly ; to mu-
tilate, or disfigure, or enfeeble it, is to
commit a sort of outrage on the outer
walls of the temple of God; and it shows
disrespect to Him who deigned once to
become flesh and dwell among us. It is
as if a Jew had brought some kind of
pollution into the courts round about the
Holy Temple in Jerusalem. But to harm
your mind; to mutilate, or disfigure, or
enfeeble that willingly; to debase it to
unworthy aims ; to defile your memory
and imagination with unclean thoughts —
it is like taking some abominable thing
into the very Holy of Holies. The pro-
fanest Jew might well shrink from such
sacrilege as that.

147

Let us pray God to make and keep
us real in our bearing toward our fellow-
men, so that they can count on us ; so
that they can know what our words are
worth ; so that, if ever in the dark days
of misfortune they should be driven to
ask from us a fulfillment of what we
have said under the sunshine of pros-
perity, they might never be disappointed.

^tpttmhtt ttoent^-touttS

Whenever you can find some church,
or corner of a church, where you can
actually put forth some energy of your
own and impart some spiritual gift to
your neighbors, you yourself will be spir-
itually more comforted and strengthened
than if you had just sat idly in the pew
and listened to the eloquence of a Chrys-
ostom, or of Paul himself.
148

To know that you have spoken from
God to another soul, and helped that soul
to find its Divine Master, and its heav-
enly home — that is certainly the highest
of Christian joys; a chief reward of
Christian work. The opportunity for
such work and such reward is the great
inducement to enter the Christian minis-
try, making it, as I believe it is, with all
its pains and trying responsibilities, the
happiest work ever appointed for man.

September t'mtnt^^itti

It is a question whether an infidel who
sends school books and medicines to a
heathen land may not more nearly re-
semble the e:ood Samaritan than would a

Christian confessor who is content to
149

send nothing at all.

If you are a friend of Jesus Christ,
the next time you find yourself in any
trouble, or temptation, or sorrow, you
may hear the voice which spoke to
Simon, addressing you by name, and
saying : ''I have prayed for thee that thy
faith fail not."

It may be well that our social conver-
sation should be decently clothed in be-
coming forms of courtesy, but we do not
wish it padded and masked and dis-
guised. Even our common forms of
greeting ought to match the reality of the
sentiments beneath them ; they ought not
to deceive. If your word of address
would naturally lead a neighbor to sup-
pose that you respect him, or that you
love him, or that you are willing to
serve him, or that you have all confi-
dence in him — God forbid that you
should be deceiving that neighbor in any
of those matters.

150

"Take my yoke upon yon," He
says, . . and you know this means the
yoke of kindly service toward others.
Jesus will teach . . that, by kindly
helping others, they may find strength
enough and to spare for their own heavy
burdens ; by cheering others in sorrow
they may find their own sorrowing hearts
comforted ; in the act of forgiving others
they may find their own sins forgiven ;
in loving others they themselves grow
lovable to God and men.

We sometimes speak slightingly of
science, or fearfully, as if it were an en-
emy of the faith, the parent of scepti-
cism and atheism. I believe we ought
rather to thank God for it, and that its
total influence has been, is and will be
to call men back from the vain imagina-
tions and superstitions and doubts of
their own hearts to the real — the reality
— the eternal truth. Whoever honestly
bears witness to anything that is true is,
either willingly or unwillingly, bearing
witness on God's side.
151

fSDttobn tit0t

When one must sacrifice the body for
the mind, let him see himself a step near-
er those things which are eternal. The
gain that has come to him in the enlarg-
ing of this higher intellectual nature can-
not be measured by any scale of years;
the treasures of knowledge should be es-
timated in the light of eternity. And
when one has sacrificed the life of his
mind for the life of his heart . . .
shall he mourn as those without hope
beside the tomb where so precious a part
of him lies buried? . . Whatever
good thing he has laid down in the way
of Christian duty, of devoted love, that
good thing he shall 'take again.

flDctobet i^econti

Every day and every year is bringing
to everyone opportunity for the largest
and best, and most honorable and most
acceptable service he has it in him to
render.

152

iSDttobtt tjttti

There is a kind of costly service and
sacrifice that is never exchanged except
among friends who love each other dear-
ly. We are not willing to accept it from
strangers, because it costs so much. Some
day the Lord may hold out to you the
privilege of rendering some such friendly
and costly service. Are you going to
shake your head and say: "Not now,
Lord ; a little later, maybe, when I have
finished my book, or my game, or my
other task. When I have nothing else to
do, I will hear Thee again of this mat-
ter." That kind of chance does not wait;
if you treat it so you lose it.

€)ctofaet touttl)

It is a great safeguard to character
to have the capital of your time and
strength invested in some business which
really blesses the community.
153

flDctofaet tittS

It is true that we no longer get our
warnings from the Hps of inspired
prophets, but there are other ways of re-
ceiving the message if we have ears to
hear. Whenever any child or man, hav-
ing taken any part of a wrong step begins
to feel the unhappy consequences of it,
there is the warning, and it may come as
straight from Heaven and with as Di-
vine authority as if it were delivered by
some prophet of old.

flDctobet 0Mi

It was a beautiful thought of the old
Hebrews that our past and future are
somehow joined in God. He is the One
from everlasting to everlasting. All the
generations of men come together in
Him. He was the God of the fathers;
He shall be the God of the children. He
gathers up into Himself not only our
brightest hopes, but also our tenderest
memories.

154

<3Dttobtt ^tttnt^

Some of us have somehow fallen into
the idea that justice, God's justice, was a
thing to be afraid of and avoided. The
old prophets always give us to under-
stand that it is a thing to be longed for ;
that the one hope of the world is the un-
failing justice of God.

You might build splendid churches
all over the land ; you might devote your
whole fortune to the endowing of mis-
sion societies or theological seminaries,
— even so you cannot hope to please God
unless you are willing to do justly and
to love mercy.

It is through our conscience that
Jesus Christ makes His strongest appeal
to us. If we ever truly yield to Him, it
will be because our conscience has recog-
nized Him as Master.
155

SDttobn nintj

Any piece of work that. is really big
— big enough so that a true man would
be justified in devoting his whole soul to
the doing of it — that piece of work will
be too big for you to see the end of it in
this short earthly life. You will have to
be contented, as Moses was, if, before
you close your eyes for the last sleep,
God will take you up to some height of
vision from which you can look forward
in hope to the future accomplishment of
your heart's desire after you are gone.

fSDttobtt tents

The lifeless pages of a printed book
can never hold a real confession of faith.
The best they can do is to record such a
confession ; the heart of a living man is
the only vessel on earth which can possi-
bly hold it.

156

flDctofaet debentS

You never found a criminal who took
much comfort in the word ''justice." Try
to cheer him by saying that "he will be
sure to get justice," and he will answer
that that is just what he is afraid of.
But if you can hold out any hope to him
that his Judge is merciful and gracious,
that is better news. And that is the hope
which the Bible holds out to us. Our
Judge is just, for He will never wrong
friend or enemy. But He is more than
just; He is full of grace.

<3Dttobtt ttodftji— Columfau0 2Dag

The genius of the American nation,
that for which God was planning in the
discovery of this new continent, was
something very different from a mere
vulgar rush for wealth, or a blatant
boastfulness over bigness, and noise ; and
this better, truer America, still lives in
the thought and hope and love of many
of our people.

157

iSDttobtt tfjitttmt^

Righteousness — Tightness ; right
means straight. All things human are
strongly infected with a tendency to go
crooked. You straighten them out to-day
and hammer every angle into what looks
like a faultless line, and you will wake
up to-morrow to find a dozen new kinks
at most unexpected places. It is a splen-
did word and a splendid thought, that of
the old Hebrew, that our God is a right-
eous God, and that He loves straight
paths and straight men and women to
walk in them ; that every moral crooked-
ness is an offense in His sight.

<3Dttobtt tourtontS

Human life is the precious thing. It
is rightly thought to be a mark of ad-
vancing civilization that men should learn
to value even the humblest human life
above all price in material riches.
iS8

<3Dttobn tittttntf^

In our solicitude for our neighbors'
houses we must not neglect our own. Is
your own house safe? You would not
rest comfortably to-night if someone had
shown you that the foundations of the
house you live in were a sham ; mere
stucco and crumbling mortar what had
professed to be solid rock ; and that with
the first hard shower that should moisten
them or the pressure of the first stiff
breeze blowing against its wall, the whole
pretentious concern would crash togeth-
er into the cellar, bearing you and yours
in the ruin. You ought not to rest com-
fortably to-night if that is the sort of
dwelling place you have been making for
your soul.

So soon as our eyes are opened to see
the life that Jesus lived, our hearts tell
us that is the life every man ought to be
living.

159

iSDctobn ^tbmtttnt^

It is very often a sign of grace to
have a cheerful countenance and an en-
couraging ring to the voice ; the sort of
good cheer that will survive a fourteen
days' storm. . . I am afraid our faith
has not enough of that robust and joyful
quality. It is too much like a barome-
ter ; it goes up and down with the weath-
er. We believe in God when the sun
shines ; when everybody else is laughing
we can smile a little too. But how often
we fill the air with lamentations at the
first hint of sorrow, or loss, or danger !
It ought not to be so if we believe in
God. Our faces ought to be of the sort
that would make the darkest day seem
bright for those about us.

Forgiveness, life, kingdom : three
words, but not to be separated. They all
come together in the one Gospel of
Christ.

i6o

i3Dttobet ninttttnt^

This is a good world in which to live ;
it must be so since God created it, and
Jesus Christ thought it worth dying for
to redeem it. But it is not the kind of
world where all things turn out right, as
a matter of course. It is not a world
where any and every road you may hap-
pen into will be sure to bring you to the
right destination.

<3Dttobtt t^tntitti

For some reason God has so ordered
the affairs of men in this world that wit-
ness-bearing becomes the most important
service that one man can render to his
fellows. We do not all know everything ;
at the outset we know scarcely anything
of what we need to know. And when
the knowledge of these important facts
comes, it is not revealed to all, directly
and indifferently. Some one man makes
the discovery, is shown the vision, and
then it becomes his gracious mission to
tell his neighbors what he has seen.
i6i

Every story of another's fall, espec-
ially if it has been unexpected, startling,
ought to send us at an early hour to
some lonely place where we can open our
hearts to God and pray that He will
cleanse us from this hidden fault.

It has often been the dream of good
men, whether they call themselves monks
or Puritans, that they could devise some
scheme of precise discipline that should
shut all the saints in and all the sinners
out. But if they had studied Christ's
parable of the tares, they might have
known beforehand that the scheme would
not work. For the attempt fails both
ways. So much of the world's sin, alas,
often finds its way in among the so-called
saints, and so much of the Divine grace,
thank God, often finds its way out among
the so-called sinners.
162

Do you not grow homesick sometimes
for the old-fashioned loyalty; where
brave men made it their first care not to
exact deference for themselves, but to
show deference to someone else?

What you need to learn, and what the
noblest men of all ages would teach us,
is, that no true manhood is possible until
you have found some authority above
yourself to which you bow with unques-
tioning loyalty.

The recognized test of genius in every
department is that it should have some
gift of prophetic power; should be able
to see and declare, in some way, that un-
changing Eternal, which is always mani-
festing itself through the shifting phe-
nomena of Time.

163

It may sometimes be more of a kind-
ness to some poor fellow, in your neigh-
borhood, if you will take time to stop and
look at him, look into him, look him
through, than if, without looking, you
tossed him a piece of money to be rid of
him.

If you know of any soul anywhere
who is now in the hour of darkest temp-
tation— his Gethsemane, and you will
hasten to his side to stay with Him
through it, I am sure you will find the
Master going there with you or before
you.

The doctrine of atonement means
that when Christ bids us turn the other
cheek, instead of striking back, he is sim-
ply bidding us imitate his Father, God,
who loved us when we did not love Him,
and sent His Son that we might live
through Him.

164

Every sincere man will have still a
vivid sense of the weakness of the faith
by which he has taken hold of the hand
of Christ. But if we have taken hold
of that hand at all, we have a right to lift
our heads higher, and to breathe more
freely, and to tread more confidently, be-
cause we have heard our best Friend say :
*'I am He that was dead, and behold I
am alive forevermore."

Let us not delude ourselves into
thinking that it is well with us if we of-
ten do what is right, or if we generally
avoid what is very wrong. . . "He
that is not with me is against me." The
question is a very sharp one : accept or
refuse ; love or hate ; friend or foe. And
in God's book of remembrance, what an-
swer to that question stands opposite each
of our names?

I6S

iSDttobtt ttoent^-nmtj

Civilization is largely a matter of cus-
toms, and to throw aside the customs
might mean to forfeit the whole inheri-
tance of the ages and make a savage of
yourself once more.

No two descendants of Adam are just
alike. Each fresh human child will grow
into a shape a little different from that
of any child before it, and yet the world
over, and through all the ages, the hu-
man body is the same ; bears one inimita-
ble and unmistakeable type, which the
living soul of man always shapes for its
visible habitation. And so we are pre-
pared to expect that the Church, this vis-
ible body of the spirit of Jesus, with all
its diversity of growth, will follow some
one type, some enduring mark or marks
divinely appointed, by which we can
everywhere recognize it under all its va-
rieties.

i66

There are mountains of vision, and
men climb them now and then, and see
things ; and it is by the guidance of what
they see up there that human society
makes its progress down here. . . All
the great reformers were men who had
been on the mountain. Lincoln saw that
this nation could not remain half slave
and half free, and that vision made him
our leader. . . I wish we could catch
the old Hebrew habit of thinking every
such vision of useful sagacity and dis-
cernment is a gift from the Lord, and to
be improved with a sacred sense of ac-
countability to Him, so that every states-
man, far-sighted enough to lead his peo-
ple, every social reformer — yes, and
every captain of industry, would often
hear a voice and recognize it as the aw-
ful voice of God, solemnly charging him
to faithfulness in making all things ac-
cording to the pattern that has been
shown him on the mount.

167

The strange fact is that the Maker of
this world, to whom certainly it right-
fully belonged, the whole of it, when He
assumed human form and walked about
over its fields and roads, laid no exclu-
sive claim to any part of it. . . Any
man endued with Christ's spirit, if he
should happen to hold title to certain
houses and lands, could hardly in his
own mind think of his title in the light
of an exclusive possession, for it is
enough for the disciple that he should
be as his Master.

Bottmbtt 0ttonh

The whole story of human progress
is made up of the combined biographies
of those choicer spirits who fall again
and again and again; who forget the
number of past failures in their unchang-
ing determination to keep on till they
succeed. . . Forgetting the failures
behind and still reaching forth to the
unkno vn success ahead, some one touch-
es it at last.

l68

To save a man, in the language of the
Gospel, means to make a whole man of
hhn; to deliver him from every sort of
perversion or mutilation of any part of
his nature; to develop all his God-given
powers to the utmost. No part of him
must be wasted ; every part of him, body,
soul and spirit, must be saved.

A' late writer has well said: "The
great causes of God and humanity are
not defeated by the hot assaults of the
Devil, but by the slow, crushing, glacier-
like mass of thousands and thousands of
nobodies. . . We shall be followed
and judged, each of us who think our-
selves nobodies, for his or her personal
attitude to the great movement of our
time." How true that is! If every cit-
izen among the hundreds of thousands
in a city knew that he was somebody,
we should not wait so anxiously for the
final counting of the ballots.
169

iRobembet titt^

What we need, and always have
needed, and always shall need for the
public safety, is a man here and there
among the crowd — one who is no long-
er a child blown about by every wind of
doctrine, but a man grown, able to think
his own thoughts, see with his own eyes,
choose his own ground and hold it, what-
ever others say and wherever others go ;
that is, a man of culture, strong enough
to stand for something, and leave a
mark that will stay in the course of hu-
man events.

It seems to me wonderfully interest-
ing that a perfectly holy life could have
been lived for so many years in a little
place like Nazareth, and no one had tak-
en special note of it. It shows what a
simple and natural thing goodness may
be. Nothing pretentious about it; noth-
ing portentious about it.
170

One of our statesmen used to say
many years ago in view of the facts of
African slavery; "I tremble when I
think that God is just." . . Are there
not a good many facts connected with
our institutions of drinking — the trade
in it; the laws about it; the vast profits
made out of it as a price of blood; the
awful degradation caused by it; the sel-
fish indifference of most of us to it — that
a man need not be very much of a
prophet, if ever these facts are brought
home to him, that he should say in his
heart : "I tremble when I think that God
is just."

jRobembtr tiQ^tfj

I want as much as I can have of the
personal element in my religious faith,
so that whatever else may appear doubt-
ful in the world about me, I may be able
to say with all my heart, *'I know whom
I have believed."

171

Bobtmbtt nintS

God the Father, God the Son, God
the Holy Spirit. Not three Gods, but
one God : God over us, God with us, God
in us.

Mottmbtt tents

When you have seen a score or so of
foohsh fishermen and other humble folk,
who had been scattered and dazed by a
great calamity, transformed into a con-
quering host, who can stand before rul-
ers and kings without faltering, and can
reason before philosophers without
stumbling, and can convert nations and
rejuvenate a worn-out world, you must
be dull at wit indeed if you do not begin
to suspect that there is a strange secret
with them somewhere; that these amaz-
ing results follow from some hidden
cause; that this mighty river, plowing
with swelling current through the ages,
tells of some hidden spring back among
the hills. . . Any man anywhere who
fears God may hope for admission to
this favored company.
172

What America most of all needs to
save it, humanly speaking, is that enough
of the people should deliberately invest
their treasure in the things that make for
righteousness. If they will do that, you
need feel little anxiety about their hearts.
Their hearts will be in heaven while their
feet walk on the earth. And for them
the heavenly reward will not be altogeth-
er a matter of faith and hope ; God will
be paying it to them liberally, day by day,
good measure, pressed down, and shaken
together, and running over.

There is hardly a word in our lan-
guage, or in any language, that means
more than "home." It means the safest
place for us ; the best-known place ; the
place that always stays the same; the
place where our dearest ones live with us
— where our life began, and where we
instinctively hope that it may end.
173

"The love of Christ constraineth us."
Does not this set forth the one pecuhar
characteristic of the Gospel, marking it
off from all other religions ; the one pe-
culiar characteristic of every Christian,
marking him off from all other men?
. . . In the natural heart of man
there may always be present innumera-
ble seeds of good impulse, but almost
frozen they are, alas ! buried. The one
thing that can bring them to life, that
regenerates the heart, is the warmth
streaming upon us from the Sun of
Righteousness ; and that is the mighty in-
fluence of Christ's love.

iSobemfaet toutteentj

The next time we find ourselves
tempted to discontent for lack of appre-
ciation, stop and think of those silent
years in the life of the one Man of all
ages who was born to shine and rule.
174

Mobtmbtt titUtnti

The wonder is that we are not all of
us constrained by the love of Him who
died for us, though we have sinned
against Him. You would think such
love as that must so take possession of
all hearts that no room would be left for
any rival affection. H we have the
heart of a true man in us, or of a true
woman, then Jesus should own the whole
of it.

iRobember ^itttmt^

Let God choose whom He will for
the public office of preaching to the mul-
titudes at Pentecost, or ruling among the
churches, if only He will fit us for this
quieter service of going in our Master's
name, and with our Master's spirit, into
any humble home where some poor soul
or body needs His help and comfort.
175

Mobtmbtt ^tbtnttmt^

God is a God of truth, and there is
nothing which He more instinctively
hates than a He ; a false pretence of any
sort. And the holier the pretence the
more God seems to hate the falseness of
it. By as much as a true Christian is the
dearest thing to Him, a hypocrite is the
most intolerable thing to Him. For even
if there were nothing positively very
wicked in a hypocrite's life, as we count
wickedness, yet the emptiness of all those
fine professions, the hollowness of that
glaring sham, is something which a God
of truth cannot away with. He grows
weary of it.

li Christ's name should come into
your familiar family conversation, would
it come as a stranger, bringing a sense of
constraint, or would it come as belonging
there by the best possible right — one of
the household words — a name that you
all love to remember — a presence that
you all love to have there with you?
176

iBlobember nintttmt^

It has been one of the most con-
vincing evidences of Christianity that its
power over men grows stronger in pro-
portion as their need grows greater.

"What is in a name?" some ask. But
there is much in it; and we all think so
when the name happens to be our own.
We all prefer that our neighbors should
care enough about us to know our name
and remember it, and be able to call us
by it. When one calls you by name it
shows that a certain part of his memory
and affection and hope is reserved to
you, belongs to you, and will stay empty
unless you fill it. What if the God of
heaven should ever call you by name,
showing that you personally were some-
thing to Him, that some part of His
memory and affection and hope was re-
served to you, belonged to you, would
stay empty unless you filled it ! If I can
know that I am as much to the Eternal
God as that, I shall be very sure that
death cannot make an end of me.
177

A disciple of Jesus will sometimes
say: "I must be good, to make God love
me." No, no; that would be beginning
at the wrong end altogether ; but "because
God has shown such love toward me,
therefore I must love Him." That stands
as the first commandment of the Chris-
tian law. And, if I love Him, then I
must keep all His commandments; that
is the substance of our morality.

To know the goodness of the Lord
and not love Him for it; to come under
the strong attraction of such a nature as
Jesus Christ and resist the attraction —
why, you are wounding the whole affec-
tional side of yourself. The faculty of
love is too delicate to trifle with. A man
may find that he has destroyed it; that
he can no longer love anyone but him-
self ; and, when he has reached that point,
it is likely he may fall to hating himself.
For life without love is not worth the liv-
ing, and the man himself comes to feel
that it had been good for him if he had
not been born.

178

Every sin is something started on a
down track, and, if it has not gone be-
fore us to judgment or confession, then
it is following after, more and more
swiftly. Sometime those sins will all
catch up. . . Ah! shall we not send
them on to judgment ahead of us? Shall
we not freely confess them to God, and
have the record of them washed out in
the blood of the Lamb before that world
of final retribution has been reached?

Our Lord Himself was a recluse
sometimes. He had His lonely gardens
of prayer and mountains of vision, in
which few could go. But for a disciple
of Jesus, as for the Master, those doors
of separation must open outward easily.
The lonely glory of the Transfiguration
will only prepare the way for meeting
the crowd down on the plain and healing
the poor child.

179

The twelfth chapter of Hebrews be-
gins with the exhortation, "Let us run
with patience the race that is set before
us, looking unto Jesus" — and then goes
on to say : ''Let not that which is lame be
turned out of the way, but let it rather be
healed." A strange rule for the race-
course ; each able-bodied runner to reach
back a hand to the faltering competitors
behind him. But this simply shows us
how the Christian course differs from all
worldly and selfish forms of competition.
Here the man who can push the largest
number of his fellow-runners up to the
goal ahead of him carries off the prize.

Heaven — there is no toll-gate on the
highway that leads thither. Its benefits
are as free as the air — offered freely for
the breath of every living thing. The
only price is that we should open our
lungs and draw it in from Heaven's win-
dows. 'The wages of sin is death, but
the free gift of God is eternal life
through Jesus Christ, our Lord."
1 80

Can we believe that God has provided
and reserved so bounteous a land as ours
for so vast a people, educated through
so long a time at so great a cost, without
some grand purpose for that people to
accomplish? Of course He has such a
purpose. He has provided this vast store
of materials because He intends to make
something out of them at which all man-
kind shall wonder : something in which
all the nations of the earth shall be bless-
ed : a great nation, free, prosperous, at
peace ; knowing no king but Jesus ; know-
ing no enemy but idleness and ignorance
and injustice and vice; a nation strong
enough to compel the whole world's fear,
but using this strength to bless the whole
world ; . . a people whose God is
the Lord.

*'The secret of the Lord is with them
that fear Him." Others may hear the
rumor now and then ; they may be start-
led by strange sounds, or dazzled by
strange sights, but they do not learn the
secret unless they fear God.
i8i

Every man has in him the possible
making of a Caesar, himself his own
god; his pleasure and reputation treated
as the whole purpose of the empire. But
every man also has in him some distant
blood relationship to that other Lord
who died on Calvary. . . And, if
Christianity has really come near enough
to touch Him, the proposal is just this,
that His world should be turned upside
down.

Mo^tmbn tfjittitt^

With regard to his highest interests,
his best work, every faithful Christian is
looking toward the day, not toward the
night; the future means increasing
brightness, not increasing gloom. The
past, and even the present, have been a
state of drowsiness, from which he must
be aroused to new diligence, such as be-
comes the day. And the final issue will
be not universal darkness and cold: the
sun setting never to rise again; the tmi-
verse run down — but eternal Hfe; a new
sun rising above the horizon never to set
again : a new heavens and a new earth
wherein dwelleth righteousness.
182

^tctmbtt tit^t

The old mob was quite right about
it; the Christian messengers all did con-
trary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that
there is another King, one Jesus. That
is the issue exactly. You must not let
any soft-spoken peacemaker deceive you
about it, as if Christianity made some
less radical proposal; as if Jesus were
willing to leave Caesar still on the throne,
too. It is not so; the angry mob knew
better. . . Your world is to be turned
upside down, if you become a Christian;
Christ's will made supreme, and yon
Caesar made a loyal servant of God.

SDfcembet sfeconti

We may be sure that it is not the
actual attainments in holiness that God
regards, but the willingness to attain, the
pressing forward to attain. Only let a
man be started upward, and there will be
time enough to rise before God is
through with him. . . God never
withholds the straw and then demands
the bricks.

183

There is a kind of fear — or you may
call it reverence — which is a part of the
highest love — all love. And the man
whom you, yourself, would be willing to
admit to your most confidential intimacy
must possess that sort of fear toward
you. He must be one whom you can
trust not to presume upon your intimacy ;
not to thrust himself upon you further
than you would wish him to go; not to
pry into what you did not wish him to
know. You can trust him not to profane
the Holy of Holies with you. In this
sense he must fear, else you would not
have thrown down the outer barriers of
reserve. So we deal with each other,
and so God deals with us. He invites
us into His familiar friendship, but we
are cautioned not to presume upon it.
His name becomes a dear and household
word, but the old commandment stands
that we take not that name in vain.

^tttmbn fouttlj

When a man made in the image of
God says, 'T am willing," it ought to
mean that something is going to happen.
184

SDtttmhtt titti

In every department of human effort
the successful workers are those who
have mastered the art of mental and
practical perspective. Oh, if we could
acquire more of this art of perspective,
all of us, in the one matter of our read-
ing! We have not much time for read-
ing, most of us, and yet think of the col-
umns and pages that we do read, even
with a scarcity of time, that would hard-
ly be worth reading if centuries of leisure
were at our disposal. Crimes and scan-
dals, and all the much-ado-about-nothing
that crowd the columns of the daily paper
— you read those, and books too, that
will be forgotten almost before the ink
is dry upon their pages. But for the real
books that will never be forgotten there
is no time. Have we not mistaken the
background for the foreground? Care-
ful to bring so many things in, while the
one thing needful, or worth while, is
crowded out.

185

^December jafi^tS

How slow of heart we are to accept
all the gladness that the Gospel has given
us ! It saddens us that time moves
quickly. We think and speak as if the
departing years were taking with them
all that we hold dear. Can we not learn
to strengthen ourselves in the belief that
the fast-coming years are bringing with
them what we hold dearer? Ours is not
the unspoken sadness of evening, but
the joyous exhilaration of the morn.
Even when those sadder memories come
of loved ones gone, ought not our sorrow
itself to become a form of hope, since we
believe that those who sleep in Jesus,
God will bring with him?

The worst unhappiness in this world,
I suppose, always comes in one way or
another out of selfishness, which is an-
other name for pleasure-seeking ; and the
best happiness in the world comes in one
way or another out of love, which is an-
other name for pleasure-giving.
i86

SDtttmhn eiffStS

We are conscious of having so little
power for Christian work. . . How
you have envied some servant of God
who has this very power which you lack !
. . . You want the gift — are you will-
ing to pay the price ? The thought comes
over you with a shock what the price is
that many servants of God have actually
paid to get that power of blessing: it is
the price of pain. They have been made
perfect through suffering. The comfort
with which they cheer the hearts of
others is that with which they themselves
have been comforted of God.

SDecemftet nintli

I admire the good manners of any
man or woman in society to whom it has
become an unconscious habit to try to
give pleasure to those who might not
otherwise have any — to the people near
the wall and near the door.

187

SDtttmbtt tenti

No age ever needed more than ours a
deep, personal religious faith in the
hearts of the people. Men have always
needed such faith that they might be fit
for heaven, but we need it in this demo-
cratic age that we may be fit for earth.

^tttmbtt tltbtnt^

Friends, is it God's salvation that you
are moving toward; that the swift years
are bringing nearer to you? You know
whether or not that is true for you.
Something is nearer than when you first
heard this Word of God — what is it?
What is it that the days are bringing
toward you so swiftly? Ah, friends,
wake up and see. It is no time for sleep-
ing till that is settled. You ought not to
close your eyes in sleep to-night until you
know the answer to the question. What
is it that the days are bringing toward
you so swiftly? — for whatever it is, it is
nearer to-night than when this day began.
1 88

The mere costliness of the house of
worship is not an offense against God
nor a defrauding of the poor. It seems
to me old David's impulse was a thor-
oughly worthy one, which made him un-
easy unless the house in which he wor-
shipped his God was finer and costlier
than the house that he had built to cover
his own head.

SDecember t^ittontg

From the day when our first parents
began to sin, this world has been full of
noisy excuses. For there was the apple
eaten : and the woman said : "The ser-
pent beguiled me and I did eat ;" and the
man said : "The woman gave it to me
and I did eat." . . Where can you
find anybody to acknowledge that the
bad thing done is his own fault? . . .
Stop your false and foolish excuses for
your past sin, that you may have breath
to praise God for His pardon ; and your
idle excuses from duty, that you may
have breath to say, "Here am I, send
me;" and your complainings over your
woes and imagined wrongs, that you may
have breath to thank God for His mer-
cies.

189

^tttmbtt toutteentS

Wherever man lays down his Hfe, not
for the sake of laying it down, but that
he may take it again in some higher
form, our reason says that he does well.

^tttmbtt tittttnti

"Let this cup pass from me." It was
the prayer of Christ, and it is the right
prayer for any of His disciples. . .
Put your desire into words ; ask of God,
"Save me from this hour." But what
shall you further say? For the perplex-
ity does not always end with this first
petition. "Save me from this hour" is a
right beginning; but you will not always
be able to rest in it as the right ending,
for trouble itself often proves to be a
wonderful educator of men. It will
often open your eyes. It will often show
you things that at first you could not see.
Under its stern discipline you will some-
times feel your own soul gathering itself
for the conflict ; disclosing powers of en-
durance that you had not suspected be-
fore. What if the trouble was sent you
for this very purpose — to make you
strong ?

190

What need there is to remind our-
selves in this age of the world that man's
life consisteth not in the abundance of
the things that he possesseth ! The man
himself is what is wanted.

One who has sat at Jesus' feet long
enough to learn of Him will know quick-
ly what things may be left in the back-
ground, and which are the few things,
or what is the one thing, that must be
brought out to the foreground. The one
good part that he has chosen enables him
to rule and arrange all these other inter-
ests of his life more easily. And so he
gets rid of many troubles and many
cares. A beauty comes into his life, a
symmetry, a peace ; it is the very peace
of God — something that all the riches
of the world cannot give, and all the
cares and troubles of the world cannot
take away.

191

I believe that every man, woman and
child in our churches ought to share in
the giving as in the other parts of God's
worship. Let us not cherish a foolish
pride and hold back our silver because
we cannot give gold, or hold back our
coppers because we cannot give silver;
make no bricks at all, because we have
not straw enough for the largest number
of them. Our Master is not Pharoah,
but God. He reserves His very warmest
commendation for her who holds but two
mites, and gives those.

^tttmbn nintttmt^

Has the Lord been invited to come in
and look over with you the entries in
your account book, and to make His
comment on the various balances? Has
He been trusted with the combination to
the safe? If not, suppose you leave your
desk for a moment and go softly to the
door, and listen whether, perhaps, that
door of your office is not the door at
which He stands knocking.
192

2Dag

Even in the worst times, when all
things were falling into chaos, always
just at the crisis would appear some Eh-
jah, or John the Baptist, or other like
man, finn enough to stand, if need be,
alone against the world, and pull the
world his way — God's way. The man
was never wanting in the old days in Is-
rael. And the man never shall be want-
ing. That is the promise ; and how good
a promise it is. For this manhood is
God's most precious commodity. Of all
things He has made, this has cost the
most to make.

^tttmbtt ttoentj-titjsit

The memory is an essential part of our
believing in personal immortality. "If a
man die, shall he live again?" If he
shall, then he must remember. There is
no other conceivable mark of his identity.
. . . The Bible would teach us that
death, or something after death, will
quicken the memory and make our blur-
red records stand out distinctly, so that
"everyone of us shall be able to give ac-
count of himself to God."
193

If ever the American people should
honor and value mere money above
learning they would be unworthy of their
origin. . . A wiser country, a better
educated people, is one thing that every
worthy son of the Pilgrims must demand.
Our fathers have taught us to desire a
better country, that is a better city, and,
God being our helper, we propose to have
it.

SDtttmbtt ttoentg-t^irti

As compared with the nations gen-
erally, there was once a large degree of
righteousness in the hearts of our people,
and time has shown it was a good foun-
dation on which to build any superstruc-
ture of national greatness that God might
be designing for us. But this kind of
foundation has to be not dead but living.
The stones in this temple must be living
stones. The ancient virtues of the Pil-
grim Fathers or of our great Revolution-
ary leaders can no more save America
from her twentieth century enemies than
the faith of Abraham could save Jerusa-
lem from Titus and his Romans.
194

May reverence and justice and free-
dom and charity and courage in the right
make their home among us! Give us
peace with each other and with all na-
tions of the earth for the good of the
world and the glory of mankind.

SDag

This one day in the year differs from
other days in this, that to-day the Lord
Himself takes this little child and puts
him in the midst of us ; and to-day, by
common consent, we drop our outer em-
ployments, and close our school books,
and postpone our other discussions and
quarrels, while we, all of us, soldiers and
statesmen, and lawyers and leaders, and
priests and Pharisees, or whatever we
are, fasten our eyes upon the figure at
the centre of the circle — this little child.
195

That one pilgrimage of wise men fol-
lowing the star and bearing gifts, gold
and frankincense and myrrh, and bow-
ing low in reverence when they saw the
young Child and Mary, His mother, and
offering them gifts: has it not commend-
ed to our reverence every little child, and
every mother, and has it not set the ex-
ample for innumerable caravans of gifts,
of which the little ones are to be the chief
recipients ?

mttmbtt mtntv-0tbtnt^

The question to ask ourselves is not,
"Am I as watchful to do my Lord's will,
as repentant of sin, as eager for holiness,
as near to God, as I was a year ago?"
but, "Am I much nearer to God now than
I was a year ago? Am I much more
eager for holiness, more repentant of sin,
more watchful to do my Lord's will?
Have I been waking up as the day ad-
vances? Whether I hear it or not, His
voice has been summoning me to higher
duties ; the morning is brighter ; the day's
tasks are more urgent. Have I been
waking up to them?"
196

Does the love of Christ constrain
us, friends? Does it constrain you?
Christ's love is strong enough to do
it, but does it? A man can keep
himself, if he will, beyond the reach of
the very strongest motives. The heart
grows callous after repeated kindnesses
that have been unworthily received.
Have you not been reminded of it, when
you have heard men mocking at the name
of Jesus Christ? If they are determined
not to love the Saviour who suffered for
them, it may make them hate Him the
more to remember what strange kind-
nesses He showed to them. . . "The
love of Christ constrained." Are you
that sort of a Christian? Think whether
it is so or not ; give your answer to Him.

We have cHmbed now almost to the
crest of the hill; almost to the end of the
old year. A very few steps more and
we shall cross the divide, and look down
into the unknown country beyond — what
shall we see there? What is God's pur-
pose in bringing us thus far on our jour-
ney?

197

One often finds that he has left behind
him in the old so much he never recovers
in the new. Beautiful things had grown
up in a community where people had
lived side by side in friendly helpfulness
through the years or for generations.
The old family alliances, the old local
traditions and objects of pride, the pretty
courtesies and ceremonies peculiar to that
particular locality, the local standards
which have supplied the measure of
achievement, the old songs of the people,
the old school house on the green, the
old church on the hill, and the old
churchyard.

This journey of time that we are al-
ways making is the irrevocable journey.
We might travel back a thousand leagues
of space ; we cannot travel back over one
moment of time. . . The old country
— that dear yesterday where we thought
we had a home — has been left forever
behind. We shall never see its shores
again. . . This is the pathos of hu-
man life.

198

What is after all the one great object
of human life? What is *'the one thing
needful?" . . The deeper heart of
our human race has always felt that tliat
"one thing needful" for human worthi-
ness must somehow be connected with
God. But there the difficulty appears.
God is so great and seems so far away.
So the old story from the Gospel is dear
to us, and has been helpful and cheering
to generations of readers; for Mary
chose the good part, when she sat at
Jesus' feet and listened to His word. For
that was Immanuel — God with us: the
will of God revealed in matters of pres-
ent human duty; the glory of God em-
bodied in a human form, and shining
from a human life.

The whole world knows now that
Jesus' life was triumphant, after all. All
the sorrow and pain and failure of it
were only for a little while. What came
at last, and came to stay, was the victory.

199

IBibUogtartg

VOLUMES OF SERMONS

1886. The Ways of Wisdom, and Other Sermons, New
York: Anson D. F. Randolph & Co. Pp. 219.

1902. For Whom Christ Died. Philadelphia : Presby-
terian Board of Publication. Pp. 157,

1905. God's Choice of Men : A Study of Scripture.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 231.

1909. A Study of the Lord's Prayer. Philadelphia :
Presbyterian Board of Publication. Pp. 148.

PAMPHLET SERMONS

1889. Revision of the Confession of Faith. (Two Ser-
mons). Plainfield.

1892. The Ten Commandments Filled Full by Christ.
Plainfield.

1896. The City and Its Church. Plainfield: Re-
printed from "Hartford Seminary Record."

1900. [Sermon on The Divine Election, but without
title]. Plainfield.

1902. Victory : an Easter Sermon. Plainfield.

1903. Desiring a Better Country. New York : New

England Society.

203

1903. Honor to Whom Honor is Due. New York:

Sons of the Revolution.

1904. National Prosperity. New York : Printed by

Request of the Brick Church Congregation.
1904. In the Unity of Faith. New York.
1904. An Angel, or a Man? New York: Printed by

Request.
1907. Two Sermons : i. Privilege. 2. To Follow is

to Believe. New York : Printed by Request.
1907. The Ministry of Quiet Work. New York :

Printed by a Member of the Brick Church

Congregation.

1907. Sunday Observance. Printed by Woman's Na-

tional Sabbath Alliance.

1908. The Ship and the Life. New York : The Ameri-

can Seamen's Friends' Society.
1908. Christmas Sermon. New York.
1910. The Day of Pentecost and the City Budget. New

York : Republished from "The Survey" by

Bureau of Municipal Research.
1910. The Church in Thy House. (Last Sermon).

New York: Printed by the Session of the

Brick Church.

204

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